Fuck All Of This, It Has Gotten Me Nowhere... But More Depressed.

[rocklobster]

I am 19 years old. for 18 years of my life I have been an athiest.(didnt grow up in a christian family, in fact i never went to church until

I was 18. I would say about january of 2011 was when I started to explore the faith. It all started when i was praying for the first time. I prayed

that if anyone was listening, to please respond and let me know your there. about 2-4 weeks after my known moving to colorado, I was

introduced to an old friend that use to live down the street from me in california. We started talking again, and went on a snowboarding trip

together and found out he was a "born again". I laughed it off inside. He started preaching the gospel with me. again i would just laugh.

 

but over time of hanging out with him and his fellow "brothers". i started to feel like this was truth, due to many convincing apologetics.

due to many convincing prophecies. so long story short I claimed belief. They told me all I ever had to do was believe in order to be saved.

I found out very fast that this wasnt entirely the case, you see, according to them all you need to do is believe, but the way you can tell if someone

is a "TRUE" believer is by what they call "fruit". there good deeds and love for jesus. well i thought "Im just not at that point yet to give up the things

i enjoy so much "sex, marijuana etc.." (to note i have had a rough childhood in group homes and hospitals, so for me these things were very hard to give up. as they do act as a crutch)

 

BUT HEY, I did, I gave up the sex, marijuana, and even broke up with my girlfriend (who ended up becoming a believer), after 6 months of all this she is in the same

place i am right now, broken and confused from the whole experience. fearful, and depressed. but Ill get to that more later. I gave up all these "sinful things" for a total of 3 months

before what i would call a burnout. I was a believer, but never actually believed/agreed that the morals in the bible were really all that moral. and why did God have so many

contradictions in his supposedly innerrant book!? I had to start jumping through mental hoops for these contradictions to make sense.(not even really aware of what i was doing in my head)

I tried to force myself to believe as time went on and my doubts grew. I now see how damaging this is even in the course of 6 months, i cant imagine the damage it has done to

some ex christians who were a part of the faith for 10+ years let alone one.

 

btw, I stopped smoking weed for 5 months without the help of god when i tried doing this before. for someone like myself who gets daily panic attacks and deals with ocd. marijuana

is a gift.

 

i started questioning myself, why am I doing this? well at first i would say because 1. I wanted friends in my new home town, 2. It seemed to make complete sense to me... in the beginning.

 

not to say that I now think all of it is senseless. Right now the fear that has me captive is hell. and was the only reason i clung to the faith. Who the hell wants to spend an eternity in un consumable fire right? Thats another thing, hell. What a disgusting horrible immoral place to send anyone, even hitler doesnt deserve something as bad as hell. but to go on and say anyone who doesnt believe is deserving of this????!! WHAT!!!! People always pull out the "well gods ways arent your ways" Fuck, if my ways were gods ways I would have at least a million life sentences.

 

but as much as i disagree with the morality, and ways of this so called god. It doesn't really have anything to do with what might be truth right? I meen, lets face it, if the bible is true, then the implications of it are incomprehendable.

So I disagree, does that make the bible any less true?

 

well...

 

lets see..

 

we have contradictions in the bible. that much i know.

 

but things like prophecy seem to be pretty spot on. The one thats been bothering me the most as of lately is the euphrates river drying up...

 

"Revelation 16:12 ESV

 

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east"

 

a long with other prophecies (if you want just message me to know what else im scared of lol)

 

wow is all I can think of when I hear about how this is actually happening. it sends shivers up my spine. if anyone can explain this one to me. by all means that would be awesome.

 

 

everyone... im not trolling like some may think. like some have on other forums. This is so serious to me, it makes me cry at some points. There isnt a second in the day that i dont think of these things. that im scared

to some extent. that Im depressed because I dont know what im living for when i believe in 2 complete opposites.

 

I dont want to believe that my gay brother (who i know didnt make the choice to live a harder life) is going to burn. for shits sake , hes a way more righteouss and moral man than I am. That the people who never even heard of jesus are just destined to hell.

 

I look at it this way, " a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear bad fruit" but according to the bible. God has bore some bad fruit (me/the rest of this world.)

when one creates something, and it goes to do the wrong things without really knowing at all what is wrong. who do you hold responsible, the creator or the creation?

some would say "were born with that sense." I know for a fact that i wasnt born and immediately thought that I should stone my child if he disobeys me, or that I need to follow

a diety that really isnt as obvious as christians make him out to be...

 

but so what if i dont agree right? whos to say the creator of all of us isnt a complete douche

[rocklobster]

thanks in advance everyone, i know this is a long post. but its as short as i could make it. if you could just take time to read it and help me out with

what im thinking, (As im sure plenty of people here have had similar feelings/thoughts)

[ilovemybrain]

Welcome, dude

[ilovemybrain]

I can't help you but I can direct you to look up the user "falloutdude" and read through all his threads to see what we've told him about fear of hell, till we're blue in the face. That's all I got.

[Tabula Rasa]

Rocklobster, I'm sorry you've had such a bad time of it. In regard to your thoughts that Christianity may be true, let's look at it from another angle.

 

I call this the "Argument from Transcendence". If an all powerful god exists, then quite logically, it can do anything, and can make the laws of nature and reality whatever it wants. So then, why would a being who reality is whatever it wills it to be, get it's cosmic panties in a wad if some infinitesimal creatures on a tiny planet , orbiting a star which is one among billions, which exists in a galaxy which is one of billions don't worship it? You wouldn't get pissed off if ants didn't bow down to you now would you? It's basically a sense of scale, but where even scale, or any concept of size gets thrown out the window. A being who created, time space, dimension, and any physical laws we possibly could not even fathom , isn't a being who's going to care if it's worshipped or not.

 

Sorry if that's a bit confusing, but to sum up, the god of the bible couldn't be the transcendent, omnipotent being christians say he is, because he gets angry and butt hurt if people don't lavish praise and worship on him.

 

I dunno if there's a god or not, but it's certainly not any of the insecure attention whores found in the abrahamic and other religions.

 

I hope this helps.

Tabula Rasa.

[oddbird1963]

Welcome, Rocklobster! I hope you find yourself able to relax, shed the fear and enjoy a life free of the enslavement and mental mind bending of dogma.

 

When I was a Christian, I poured over and over biblical prophecy. Believe me, prophesy is only convincing after someone else has gotten to you and through suggestion and pre-loading you with all sorts of assumptions made you see fulfilled prophecy where the actual text cannot be used to show fulfilled prophecy.

 

That's my voice of experience. Of course you will have to discover this for yourself. But whether it be supposedly fulfilled messianic prophesies or those fun and exciting end time prophesies, they are just people twisting the scripture to make you see present day relevance (or future relevance) where none exists.

[Margee]

I can't help you but I can direct you to look up the user "falloutdude" and read through all his threads to see what we've told him about fear of hell, till we're blue in the face. That's all I got.

 

Hi, Welcome rock! I enjoyed your story. Thanks for sharing. I agree with ilovebrain - We have a very dear friend here, who has been struggling for months with the same issues - just look up his posts and you will see so many suggestions. It's a real hard battle sometimes, but keep reading all the wonderful posts on here and you will find the help you need. Best wishes for you..........

[florduh]

Rocklobster - B-52's?

[agnosticator]

There isnt a second in the day that i dont think of these things. that im scared

to some extent. that Im depressed because I dont know what im living for when i believe in 2 complete opposites.

 

If it were all true, then the biblegod would help your unbelief. But there is no biblegod there to help you. You are confused after believing a lie. Anyone who gives his/her mind over to christian belief, will be confused and either stifle their doubt or wrestle with it.

[rocklobster]

Rocklobster - B-52's?

 

lol yup

[Overcame Faith]

we have contradictions in the bible. that much i know.

 

but things like prophecy seem to be pretty spot on. The one thats been bothering me the most as of lately is the euphrates river drying up...

 

"Revelation 16:12 ESV

 

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east"

 

a long with other prophecies (if you want just message me to know what else im scared of lol)

 

wow is all I can think of when I hear about how this is actually happening. it sends shivers up my spine. if anyone can explain this one to me. by all means that would be awesome.

 

Don't fall for the Christian bag of tricks when it comes to these alleged prophecies. What they are doing is to look for modern occurrences and then do their best to force them to fit into their interpretations of what they think are prophecies, but aren't prophecies at all. In fact, I will say with 100% confidence that there are no prophecies, never have been, and never will be.

 

Let's look at the one you reference. Here is the verse at issue:

 

12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East.

 

Revelation 16:12

 

This is often interpreted as some sort of miraculous event by god as drying up the Euphrates river so a large Chinese army can invade the area. For example, here is a typical interpretation:

 

The ultimate explanation is therefore relatively a simple one. By an act of God the Euphrates River is dried up. This makes easy the descent of the tremendous army of two hundred million men upon the land of Israel to participate in the final world conflict. If such an army is to be raised up, it would be natural to conclude that it would come from Asia, the great population center of the world. Although they seem to come in opposition to the Roman ruler and his power, it is clear that this invasion springs from unbelief and these armies like the others gathered “to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” forget their individual conflicts to oppose the coming of Jesus Christ in power and glory from heaven.

 

The fact that the rise of Asia has occurred in our twentieth century with so many rapid and unexpected developments is another evidence that the world is moving toward its final climax and the end of the times of the Gentiles. In Asia, as in other parts of the world, the stage is being set for the final drama in which the kings of the east will have their important part.

 

http://bible.org/seriespage/chapter-xii-kings-east-oriental-confederacy

 

Now, let's think this through. What the end-times fearmongers are saying is that the current drying of the Euphrates River is the beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecy outlined in Revelation 16:12 which removes the obstacle that the river provides for an invasion of the middle east by a large 200,000,000 million strong Chinese army.

 

Think carefully here. In our modern age just how much of an obstacle are rivers to a powerful army's desire to invade and conquer a country or region? I think you know the answer to this question. They are no obstacle at all. If China (or any country) wanted to invade the middle east, the existence of the Euphrates River even if it flowed to full capacity, would play virtually no role whatsoever. Any invasion would begin with air bombardments and large numbers of troops would be flown in by air transport, paratroopers, or, if necessary, could be transported on the ground by simply crossing existing bridges or by the use of temporary bridges across the river.

 

 

The obstacle the Euphrates River posed as suggested in Revelation demonstrates that what was written was a product of its time when rivers did pose logistical problems for invading armies. That fact alone should tell you that Revelation 16:12 has nothing to do with today.

 

Here's another prophecy for you to consider:

 

1And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

 

Acts 2:1 (KJV)

 

This is a prophecy of the development of automobiles which prophecy was made 2,000 years ago. Specifically, it tells of the Japanese manufacture of automobiles and when the people who wrote this prophecy didn't even know that Japan existed. Amazing, isn't it?

 

Actually, it's silly, isn't it? But my little joke is no sillier than what people do with other alleged prophecies, including the so-called prophecy of Revelation 16:12.

 

Stop worrying about the silliness that so many Christians engage in. It's all a bunch of non-sense.

 

Take a look here if you would like to delve a little deeper into alleged end-times prophecies and how it is all total nonsense.

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/44234-top-ten-reasons-not-to-fear-biblical-end-times-scenarios/

[Spectrox]

Hi Rocklobster. However I prefer Planet Claire!

 

Where can I start?

 

A basic tenet of logic states that the burdon of proof is on the person making the claim. For people to say that there is an invisible, inaudible superbeing who made everything in existence is a grand claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Atheists believe there is insufficient evidence to provide a rational justification for the existence of a God or Gods. Of course I have beliefs / opinions - they are based on evidence. I want to have as many true beliefs as possible and to have as few false beliefs as possible. Don't you?

 

Which particular Hell should we worry about? The Xian one? The Islamic one? The Zoroastrian one? The Viking one? The Egyptian one?

This raises the issue about which God is the true one of the hundreds that have been worshipped? It all comes down to evidence. And God (if he exists) has provided amazingly little evidence for his existence and is amazingly stupid at spreading his very important message to humanity. What's wrong with telepathy?

 

Would an all-loving God send people to Hell forever just for not believing in him? Christians are sycophants to an idea. They worship God the Mafia Boss. They don't worship God the Father. They worship The Godfather! They believe that "might makes right." Just because they think God made us that therefore gives him the right to break our legs if we don't suck up to him. The morally correct position is that he has no right to break anyone's legs.

 

I am so glad I no longer believe in this anti-social far-fetched self-contradictory delusion.

 

The God of the Bible isn't big enough, moral enough, realistic enough or consistent enough. He just isn't good enough. Christianity is simply the greatest story ever sold.

[Spectrox]

And talking of prophecies - has anyone ever read Matthew Chapter 16? It's actually very interesting. The whole passage Jesus is talking to his disciples about Judgement Day (the Second Coming). He concludes by saying:

"And each person shall be rewarded according to what he has done. I tell you the truth. There are people standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom."

It looks very much like Jesus thinks the end of the world was imminent - within the lifetime of his disciples. And yet here we are 2000 years later. Oh dear! What a blunder! Clearly the Bible needs to be a bit more contrived in that bit.

[Overcame Faith]

And talking of prophecies - has anyone ever read Matthew Chapter 16? It's actually very interesting. The whole passage Jesus is talking to his disciples about Judgement Day (the Second Coming). He concludes by saying:

"And each person shall be rewarded according to what he has done. I tell you the truth. There are people standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom."

It looks very much like Jesus thinks the end of the world was imminent - within the lifetime of his disciples. And yet here we are 2000 years later. Oh dear! What a blunder! Clearly the Bible needs to be a bit more contrived in that bit.

 

That particular passage (and a few others) were some of the earliest reasons that I began to conclude that Christianity was a false religion. Christians play all sorts of semantic games to explain away the problem, but I found none of their explanations satisfactory, and still don't. It says what it says.

[Spectrox]

And talking of prophecies - has anyone ever read Matthew Chapter 16? It's actually very interesting. The whole passage Jesus is talking to his disciples about Judgement Day (the Second Coming). He concludes by saying:

"And each person shall be rewarded according to what he has done. I tell you the truth. There are people standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom."

It looks very much like Jesus thinks the end of the world was imminent - within the lifetime of his disciples. And yet here we are 2000 years later. Oh dear! What a blunder! Clearly the Bible needs to be a bit more contrived in that bit.

 

That particular passage (and a few others) were some of the earliest reasons that I began to conclude that Christianity was a false religion. Christians play all sorts of semantic games to explain away the problem, but I found none of their explanations satisfactory, and still don't. It says what it says.

 

"Semantic games" - yes that's pretty much Christian scholarship in a nutshell.

[Antlerman]

It is both an unsurprising and sad thing that these Christians when they have nothing left that is appealing to offer from their stash of sales pitches, resort to peddling fear. How very sad. How tragic for those whose guts which wrench in pain at night over such sadistic garbage from those who claim love as the highest truth! What a complete contradiction. Why a foul exposure of the emptiness of their own souls. Such tragic fools.

[Casey]

Rocklobster - B-52's?

(Florduh)

 

This side of the pond (Australia), "Rocklobster" is slang for one of our $20 notes because they are of this colour:

 

 

Seriously though, where to begin? Let's take the "Testimonies," that you will see in christian books and/or plastered all over the internet.

 

Have you ever noticed none of these former sinners ever says, "Oh, I was just a drunk, a bit of a hoon and a hellraiser, petty criminal, dog, or just an all round lowlife louche type individual?" ("Dog" = police informer, "Hoon = smalltime hoodlum.)

 

Oh no! It's almost always, "I was a Satanic High Priest!" or some such other high profile sinner. And when one such is asked how he or she came to be one, they'll say something like, "Well I joined the Freemasons, then after I'd become an Ipsissimus of the Scottish Rite I was invited to join the Illuminati where I soon became a Grand High Panjandrum." (With all the mystical powers appertaining to the rank, goes without saying!)

 

"And of course I had the Order of the Electric Boogaloo around me neck to boot! No, I can't tell you how I earned that; Jebus has asked me not to. Make yer hair stand on end, that tale would!" Then note too, they have always burned or otherwise got rid of the actual Masonic Degrees and accoutrements, again, because Jebus told them to, so there is no proof they were really members of anything. How convenient!

 

Does this not remind you somewhat of people who wear military awards and decorations they have not earned? Of course none of them will ever say, "I was just an Infantryman (or a dog handler, or a cook's offsider.)" No, they (like the aforementioned former "hardened sinners") always make themselves out to have been members of this or that famous Squadron, Battalion, or Regiment, usually one that is a part of the Special Forces. If asked just how they earned some high decoration they unlawfully wear, then it's, "I'd like to tell you, but I'd have to shoot you if I did!"

 

Against such types in the US, there is the Stolen Valor Act, which has, one hopes, made this sort of playacting more risky than it used to be. One wonders why christians don't take a similar view of people who tell them wild tales of how bad they were, unless, contrary to what they preach, christians accept liars and wannabes, or, more likely, use their lies to scare others into the fold. In particular they will use former rock stars or musicians for this purpose, or misquote those still in the business to the same end. The bigger the sinner, the more converts they will get, although a common or garden bullshit artist will certainly do in a pinch.

 

Take Mike Warnke for example, although to be fair he was (eventually) exposed as a liar by christians. If you took what he wrote seriously, he was admitting in writing to having been an accessory before and after the fact in two murders! If that were in fact so, why was it then that he did not officially confess to these crimes? Surely, when he converted, his conscience would force him to go to the authorities? Yet no christian at the time asked that question!

 

As for drugs, don't fall for the line they will give you that "Christ will take away the desire for them." That's a version of one of Alcoholics Anonymous' 12 steps where you have to "Admit you have no power over alcohol." Bullshit! You have the same power over alcohol as anyone else; you either drink it or you don't. And you can substitute any other intoxicant you care to, the same applies, you either use it or you don't. I should add a note of caution here; given your rough childhood, it may be you need some help where drugs are concerned, if so, see that it is professional help, not christian bull droppings.

 

As for fears of the afterlife and hell, here is a quote from Marcus Aurelius:

 

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

 

You yourself said not even Hitler deserves to burn for eternity, although, were there any justice, he and several others have certainly earned several centuries worth of torment. What then have you done that is worth an eternity of torment? Other than not having taken out afterlife fire insurance that is? Don't fall for their line that all sins are equal, they are not!

 

Regards, and good luck whichever way you choose to go with this.

Casey

[par4dcourse]

Wouldn't not thinking of god sort of solve the problem? There's several other things in the world worth attention such as good food, friends, and boobies. If you can find a friend who's a chef and has boobies, you're set for life.

[Chikirin]

Right now the fear that has me captive is hell.

 

 

 

I realized that the fire insurance policy i bought had a lot of fine print. There would always be some preacher or busybody somewhere to inform me that I needed to do more, that I needed to make my calling and election sure, etc. so that after a while I had lost most of my assurance of salvation, especially after I went from Calvinist churches to Arminian. Grace, salvation are offered as these wonder ful free gifts but then after several frustrating years, these concepts just fell apart for me.

[noob]

Wouldn't not thinking of god sort of solve the problem? There's several other things in the world worth attention such as good food, friends, and boobies. If you can find a friend who's a chef and has boobies, you're set for life.

 

[hereticzero]

Once upon a time, in a magical garden, a talking snake gave a piece of magical fruit to a little girl. And, because the little girl believed what a talking snake told her, the bible god threw a fit and decided to kill everything he had made. Because the talking snake fooled the little girl into eating this fruit, a man named Jesus, who was really god, came to earth born of a virgin woman in order to sacrifice himself to save all of us from eternal death. Do you believe that story too? I am not making fun of you. I am making a point. The point is, the story of the talking snake never happened and the more important story of salvation through a sacrifice of god would not have happened in order to appease a fable. Any god would not sacrifice themselves over a story of a talking snake any more than everyone should wear red because of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. There are many prophets of the babble. Even the so-called prophecy of the coming of Jesus, was not a prophecy of the coming of Jesus but because the religion Christianity claims it is, that makes it so because they believe it is. Christianity is NOT the voice of humanity and it is certainly not the historian of god or Jesus. There is no river man cannot cross by ship or fly over by plane, or as shown above by Overcame Faith, build a bridge over and drive a tank across. People read into things what doesn't exist and claim it is inspired by god when it is just a person's imagination gone wild. So what if a river dries up? Water evaporates as an act of nature. Rivers dry up, that is just part of the cycle of the planet we live on.

[Tony73]

Prophesies: I remember the 1993 Russian constitutionalcrisis in Moscow with the tanks firing upon the Russian white house. I gathered with my Christian buddies who wereproclaiming, "This is it! Thebeginning of armageddon!" We expected this to lead the superpowers to war, ending up with more and more countries fighting in the "Holy Land". We spendmuch of the night rocking back and forth in prayer while jabbering in tongueslike the gullible young men we were. Then life just went on…

 

 

As a Christian, Iwas never good enough. Nothing I oranyone did ever really mattered. It depressed me, eroded my ambition, and my unnecessary self-restraint took away decades of enjoyable life.

 

 

You're LUCKY to get out within a year. What got me out was realizing that if a couple parts of the bible happen to be wrong, then any part of it can be wrong or inaccurate. Now I respect the morals of "The Wizard of Oz" more than the "Holy Bible."