Should Atheists Just STFU?

Well, I know my wife thinks so. She’s still a Christian, along with our three sons. And although my lifestyle and behavior have not changed since I became an atheist, it’s practically unbearable for her when I explain my beliefs to our older sons. Divorce is always on the table, and I can’t blame her.

To her, our sons’ eternal souls are at stake. When she met me, I was an idealistic, evangelistic, conservative evangelical Christian, who wanted to spend his life serving God and ‘living for eternity.’ Now I don’t actually believe humans have a soul or a spirit, beyond the sense of self that inhabits our minds. And I certainly don’t believe there is life after death.  Or if there is, the source of that ‘second life’ must not have been revealed to humankind – because the ‘revealed’ options we have to choose from religion-wise are inconceivably flawed and nonsensical.

If a creator god exists somewhere in the universe,  he hasn’t bothered to reveal himself; and the religions that remain are nothing more than mythological lies – like all the other mythological lies that came before them.

However, it cannot be denied that religion – Christianity in particular – has done an immeasurable amount of good for the world. Christians are sometimes happier and less stressed than their non-religious counterparts. They enjoy church, Christian activities, outreaches and friendships. They have a sense of inner peace and safety, trusting that God has them in the palm of his hand, that he will never leave them, and that he will one day deliver them to the ‘promised land’ of eternal bliss. And most would agree that no group as a whole has ever done more than Christians to help humanity and relieve human suffering.

So why on earth would an impertinent atheist like myself bother trying – or even want –  to burst their bubble?

Well, let’s start with the fact that it’s a lie. There is more than ample evidence that Christianity is not based  in reality. The beginning and end of Christianity is the Bible, and when analyzed critically, it implodes on itself. The God of the Bible – of the Old Testament at least – is a vicious mother fucker, and it’s high time we start calling it like it is. The dude is a son of a bitch, and if the ‘force’ behind the mish-mash we call the Bible has the power to immortalize my ‘soul’ and burn me in hell, I’m happy to let him go at it. Any ‘force’ behind the self-contradictory, reality-incompatible collection of books we call Scripture could have no more power than a dead man. Simply put, he’s fiction.  He does not exist. He cannot exist because the only ‘evidence’ we have is the Bible itself. It is sorely lacking, damaged beyond repair, and self-evidently false. And faith in fiction is fantasy.

This reason alone – the fact that Christianity is a lie, like the myth of Santa Claus – should be reason enough to inform the deceived public that they have been duped, as I myself was for many years. A lie is a lie is a lie.  And no amount of warm fuzzies attached to the lie should make it any more worth believing or perpetuating. If you doubt that Christianity is lie, read my article, Why I abandoned Christianity, and then go spend a little time at the SkepticsAnnotatedBible.com and EvilBible.com. After a brainful o’ that shit, see how much you want to worship the idiotic God monster behind it all.

But the fact that Christianity is a lie is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s more.

When I was in my teens, I bought into all the ‘end-time’ hype that started with Hal Lindsey’s book, Late Great Planet Earth,  and continued with hundreds of other writers and speakers alerting Christians and the world that the end was near. Like millions of other Christians, I couldn’t see much further than the immediate few years ahead of me. Like half the church members in America, I truly believed Jesus would return – not just in my lifetime, but in the foreseeable future. According the preachers and would-be-prophets, all the signs were there. And it seemed to make sense, especially in light of what Jesus and much of the New Testament writers taught about the urgency of it all.

Millions of Christians bought into this bullshit, and where did it get us? It ingrained in many of us a type of short-term thinking that doesn’t lend itself to a life well-planned. When you believe the end is fast approaching, and you’re as zealous as I was, even getting a college education seems like a waste of time – when there’s a lost world out there on it’s way to an eternity in hell.

In Letter to a Christian Nation, author Sam Harris talks about the dangers of world leaders holding these ‘Armageddon-Brings-Back-Jesus’ type beliefs, and the frightening consequences that could occur as a direct result. Think Israel. The Middle East. Nukes. And the return of the King.

There’s an old story about an English prisoner who,  just before being put to death, responded to the prison chaplain with these words, “Sir, I do not share your faith.  But if I did – if I believed what you say you believe – then although England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would crawl the length and breadth of it on hand and knee and think the pain worthwhile, just to save a single soul from this eternal hell of which you speak.”

Though my commitment to sharing the message of Christ was not quite this extreme, the words of that prisoner sound a lot like how I felt as a young man – believing there was absolutely nothing more important than living for eternity, investing one’s life in the Kingdom of God, and sharing the life-saving message of the gospel with a ‘lost and dying world.’  Like thousands of other young people today who are planning to spend their lives in ministry, this was my conviction, and even now, I believe I would have been willing to die for the cause.

My closest friend from childhood has a younger brother who entered the ministry right out of college.  He’s now a married missionary serving overseas. I’ve read his newsletters, and he reminds me of my younger self, zealous and ready to serve the Lord at any cost.

To ministers like John Piper, author of Don’t Waste Your Life, there is nothing greater than what this young man is doing with his life. But the sad reality is that if Christianity is a lie – and any objective analysis tells us it is – then this young man is truly wasting his life, his wife’s life, and possibly his future children’s lives. At least one will probably end up on the same road he’s travelling now, as is typically the case with children often following in their parents’ footsteps.

Knowing what I know now, I think this is a bit of a tragedy. And how long should it go on in perpetuity, without someone pointing out the cold, hard facts? I didn’t – out of respect for my friend, who preferred that I not contact his brother regarding the issue. But hopefully someone will. This young man should at least have the opportunity to look at the facts regarding his faith and his life’s mission, with an open mind, and without the obstacle of rose-colored (faith) glasses distorting his view of reality. It took a number of kind, yet blunt, atheists confronting me with reality before I was willing to finally ‘remove the blinders,’ as it were, and look at reality for what it is, rather than what I wanted it to be.

Which brings me to my next point.  Christianity keeps people locked into a completely false reality regarding the very world around us, from one field of science to another – from astronomy to geology to biology – preventing people from objectively studying and understanding the universe, the earth, the animal kingdom and its relation to humans, and so on. Where God has spoken, let not science speak otherwise.

According to various polls, 10-45% of American adults believe God created the universe approximately 6,000 years ago. And why is this? Because the Bible clearly teaches it, regardless of what some modern re-interpreters (whom I myself once followed) try to make us believe it teaches.

The genealogies contained in Genesis, while they have some mistakes and skip a generation here and there, are not missing thousands of generations, as some Christian teachers would like us to believe. The genealogies are even repeated for those who didn’t get it the first time. Whoever wrote Genesis actually believed the world was created about 6,000 years ago. It doesn’t get much plainer than that. And any god who could mess up that bad (or at all, actually) about when the world was formed and when man first inhabited the earth, is no god at all – not by any estimation.

Everything theory imaginable has been applied in an attempt to reconcile science with the Bible. But it cannot honestly be done. It leaves you knowing you’re bullshitting yourself, keeping your eyes half closed, and just hoping your brain will someday gets used to the cognitive dissonance (holding two opposing views at the same time). My brain never got used to it, though I tried as hard as I could to convince myself it was possible.  And I don’t think most other ‘thinking people’ who have honestly looked at all the facts are ever really able to come to peace holding on to their faith, while trying to believe the Bible doesn’t mean what it actually says. ‘Cause if the Bible means what it actually says – regarding science and a host of other topics – then the whole thing is complete bullshit. So that sure as hell can’t be right. Must mean something else. Or so they conclude.

Christianity is the mortal enemy of honest, objective scientific investigation and reasoning. When science teaches us that the earth’s crust shifted upward to form a mountain range millions of years ago, Christians suppose this to be a lie of the devil. They know it really happened during Noah’s Flood, an event geologists agree never happened. Ever. Not the way the Bible describes it. Not even close. Christians are forced to bend their reality to the bumper-sticker philosophy of ‘God said it. I believe it. That settles it.’

Is this what anyone wants?  To continue perpetuating lies that undermine practically every field of science?

Not to mention human science.

Biologists and anthropologists know that homosexuality often occurs naturally, without any intervention. It can certainly be ‘nurtured’ into occurring - through molestation, abuse, neglect, or other circumstances or behaviors. But it also occurs naturally, even in the animal kingdom. It is unquestionably a naturally-occurring phenomenon, and most people born with homosexual tendencies cannot be nurtured back to ‘normal’ heterosexuality.

But what does the Bible teach? It teaches that homosexuality is an abomination, a practice punishable by death in the Old Testament. And God didn’t suddenly change his definition of right and wrong in the New Testament. Several times throughoutthe New Testament, homosexuality is identified as evil.

Should Christians keep perpetuating the lie that homosexuality is an evil that can and must be changed, with enough counseling, therapy, or prayer?  Or is this one more evidence that Christianity and the Bible simply are not based in fact or reality?

I believe it is. Yet many God-fearing Christians who can’t change their sexuality would rather keep their faith, while virtually re-writing the Bible to suit their lifestyle. This is desperate and duplicitous, but for some who want to believe the Bible and will forever remain in bondage to it, this is their only option.

Sadly for the rest of us, homosexuals aren’t the only ones inflicted with a never-ending bondage to the book. Heterosexual Christians have a lifetime of guilt to look forward to as well, related to everything from lust to birth control (by some interpretations) to premarital sex to divorce to a myriad of other things the Bible (even the New Testament) indicates are wrong and sinful.

During my teen years and into my mid-twenties, I lived in agonizing guilt over lust and masturbation. When Jesus (supposedly) said, “Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart,” I believed him. And it tormented me day and night year after year.  I remained a virgin until marriage, married early at age 20, and have never been with anyone else. But lust and masturbation a marriage does not cure.

From personal experience, I can say that type of misery and frustration – living a defeated Christian life, always trying to do better – is the very last thing I’d wish upon my own sons or anyone else. When you finally discover that lust and masturbation are perfectly normal, natural experiences, and that the Bible was full of shit, and you went through all that torture for nothing, you want to punch somebody. I write.

Thankfully, most Christian young people today don’t take the Bible even half as seriously as I took it, wanting to do everything in my power to live for Christ. But to one degree or another, irrational, unnecessary guilt goes hand in hand with any attempt to please the God of the Bible and follow his innumerable demands. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Right.) Now follow these next few hundred pages of commands, and be thankful for the opportunity to do it, you sinful creature, in whom there is no good.” (My paraphrase.)

We’re supposed to be thankfully in awe that the God of  the universe would give his only beloved son to take upon himself the form of a servant and lay down his life in sacrifice and death on the cross, so that our sins could be forgiven and an eternal life of worshiping him could be ours. That’s the old, old story. I’ve told it many, many times. But I no longer believe it, because it’s simply not true. Never has been. Never will be.

Theologians can twist the words around any way they like. They can re-write and re-interpret until they’re blue in the face. They can try to make the Bible say whatever the hell they want it to say. They’re only deceiving themselves and others. They’re teaching lies. They’re dragging new generations of young and old people alike into a ridiculous bondage to a fucked-up book, convincing them to worship a fucked-up God, and perpetuating a fucked-up reality.

I was a 25+ year victim of all this fucked-up bullshit. And that’s why I’m never going to shut the fuck up.