Tag Archive for God

Elizabeth Knapp | October 31, 2011
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The Discipleship Program: Potter’s Field Ranch (Part 1)

**note: I will continue my series on the Last Days Prophecies; I apologize for not posting for a few weeks. As an activist, employee, student, and club president, I haven’t had time to do much research for the prophecy articles. However, I expect a few clear skies after Thursday that will give me time to complete prophecies 6 – 10. Meanwhile, I was looking through some photographs of my term at PFR (discipleship program) and thought maybe some people would be interested in hearing about it. Maybe it this will serve as useful knowledge to some people, or at least an experience other ex-fundamentalists can relate to.**

If you read my bio you probably know that I was sent to a Christian boarding school at 13 years of age. I stayed there until graduation in 2007, right before I turned 18. At the age of 14 I was exposed to some “radical” Christianity (the most simplified explanation I can think of) and, as a result, became a “born again, on-fire” Christian. Our spiritual counselor, or pastor, at the boarding school recommended a discipleship program (P.F.R. currently calls it a “Missions Training School“) to me called Potter’s Field Ranch; a place to “get closer to god” and study “god’s word.” So, believing that this was what god wanted from me, I filled out some paperwork. After I graduated high school in June of 2007 I made preparations for the Fall Term of P.F.R. that August.

The Students of Fall Term 2007; one of our group photographs

Money was an issue. At first I didn’t think I would be able to afford it. But when I graduated high school my uncle gave me $1,000 as congratulations money (surprise!). My grandma gave me the same: $1,000. I had a savings account that my other grandmother kept for me and added to regularly; it held $2,000 in it. The cost of the 3 month term at P.F.R. was a small amount less than $4,000, so things worked out “perfectly”…Now, as you can imagine, I still kick myself for wasting my money on this. I could have saved or used the $4,000 that I had for a much greater, much more fulfilling purpose, and I blew it…but when you believe that god wants you to do something, money is the least of your priorities.

I threw away all of that money just to subject myself to more lies (unintentional or intentional, I do not know) and mental manipulation. I also sacrificed time and energy I could have spent in college getting a worthwhile education. However, the positive side is that from this experience I gained many friends that I appreciate and admire, even though our beliefs differ now (since hearing about my atheism they have been praying for my salvation). Many of them I still talk to on facebook and we occasionally debate. I at least do not regret meeting them, or the time we shared together. I still feel deeply for our friendship.

At the Girl's Dorm; first day at PFR

In the picture above is one of my fellow peers, whose name I will keep private. This is where the girls slept, showered, and sometimes studied at night. We had seven girls in my term (there would have been eight, except for a timely biological accident). One of the staff that worked at P.F.R. was a very close friend of mine from my Christian boarding school; she graduated before me and we wrote to each other by mail frequently (since email was not allowed). Soon after she graduated she entered the P.F.R. term before mine, and after finishing the term she became an employee of the ranch.

I remember my first day at PFR, a few days early of the beginning of the term, sitting in my assigned room of the dorm nervously. This close friend of mine visited me and asked how I was doing. I told her exactly how I felt: I had expected to feel better once I arrived, but instead I sensed that I was back in a controlled institution like the boarding school. She said that I should come into this experience with an open mind. If I was going to let god work in me, I had to let my walls down. I still love and respect this person and hope that one day she will realize exactly what these words actually meant.

bunk beds in the dorms

Life at P.F.R. was a mixture of lectures, bible study, homework, leisure and chores. It was located in a very tiny town called Olney, MT, and so we were completely alone in a private part of nature by a lake called Dog Lake. We would occasionally take trips off campus to do community service. Sometimes we were given a treat like bowling. Every Sunday we carpooled to church in vans, and usually after church (while we were in town) we had an opportunity to take a trip to the store for any supplies we needed like new shampoo or other necessities.

The Lake was called "Dog Lake"

There were four bunk beds to each room. Every morning we were expected to have our beds made and our living quarters spotless and organized. Every weekend we were assigned chores and cleaned not only our living quarters, but our dining quarters, worship quarters, and lounge area. We had each paid $4,000 for a 3 month term here, yet we were doing this work for free. We would also do some of the cooking on the weekends. However, in our free time, we could take advantage of the canoes by Dog Lake or pool table, TV, coffee bar, and games in the lounge room. We had one computer in the Lounge Room–our only access to the outside world. Most of our free time was occupied with reading assignments or other assignments; as you can see, most of my peers in the Lounge Room pictured below are doing their reading assignments.

The Lounge Room; upstairs was our worship area; the coffee bar was on the right, the pool table on the left, the TV in front of the couches

We had seven boys in our term, so there were 14 students total. Only side hugs were allowed between opposite genders, and you could never be alone with a boy one-on-one. You had to have two girls and one boy, or two boys and one girl at least. These rules, of course, were made to help us “avoid temptation.” Another one of my friends from the boarding school (different from the one that became a staff member there) enrolled in a term at P.F.R. and was kicked out of the program, along with her partner in crime, for having sexual relations with one of the boys.

The church that was integrated into Potter’s Field Ranch was Calvary Chapel of Whitefish, a child of the Calvary Chapel of Ft. Lauderdale. Although genders were not explicitly segregated, it was quite clear that each gender had its role and they should not mix (except in the way that god ordained it). I recall having a conversation about the role of my gender with my female P.F.R. peers; I remember agreeing with them that the woman is the weaker gender and it is right that we should serve the man. At the time I just wanted to be in god’s will, and the Bible told me exactly what his will was for females.

In the next post I will elaborate on other rules of the program and the daily life of a P.F.R. student. Understand that much has changed since then-P.F.R. was more radical before the term that I attended, and since then the program has been watered down and modified.

Feel free to ask questions and I can answer them in the next post.

[To be continued....]

Category: Religion, Religious Recovery, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , ,
Dave Muscato | September 19, 2011
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Common arguments, refuted

Hello all,

This is the first in a series of posts deconstructing and refuting some common arguments in favor of theism, religion, faith, etc. This article will feature the so-called “TAG,” or Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God. This is the argument employed by Prussian philosopher & anthropologist Immanuel Kant in his 1763 book, Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes (The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of God’s Existence). Put simply, it goes like this:

(1) If reason exists then God exists.
(2) Reason exists.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

It is sometimes called the presuppositionalist argument as well. Additionally, you can replace “reason” with “knowledge,” “objective morality,” “logic,” “the universe,” or pretty much anything else you want.

There are several common criticisms against this one. The first is that it doesn’t demonstrate any specific god or gods. You could just as easily replace “God” with any other deity and “prove” that one is real, instead. It should be noted that parsimony requires the postulation of one god rather than more than one god, unless you have evidence to the contrary (and really, if we had evidence at all, we wouldn’t need to play these logic games to try to prove a god in the first place). It’s simply more likely that there’s only one god for which there is no evidence that they there are multiple gods for which there are no evidence, in the same way that (even though both are false), Judaism is more likely to be true than Christianity, since Judaism requires that you believe the Old Testament, whereas Christianity requires that you believe both the Old and New Testaments. The more layers of unsubstantiated crap you pile on, the less likely something is to be true.

Another criticism is the assertion that reason exists. If we’re going to use logic, we kind-of have to agree that reason exists. When theists try to use “objective morality” or “knowledge” in place of “reason,” it gets a little easier to refute. There’s no good evidence that objective morality exists, and if you’re skilled at arguing as a global skeptic, demonstrating that the existence knowledge is unprovable isn’t too difficult – this just gets down to an epistemological discussion, which is beyond the scope of this article.

(1) is more or less a bare assertion fallacy. There’s no good evidential or logical reason to justify the statement that if reason/morality/logic/the universe/whatever exists, then [a] god exists. Someone making this argument would have to explain why the existence of reason is dependent on the existent of god. The two aren’t logically linked and we have no reason to believe they are, any more than we have reason to believe, for example, that if people with the ability to type exist, computer exist. There are other explanations for how people with the ability to type came into existence – for example, the existence of typewriters would explain this, as well.

I tend not to argue too much about (2) unless someone claims that objective morality exists. Then I would ask, what’s your evidence for this? What is objective morality? How do you know that? It seems to be another bare assertion.

(3) is, again, a non sequitur relating to (1). There is no logical link between the existence of reason etc and the existence of (any) god. Reason could be explained just as well (more parsimoniously, in fact) by arguing that it evolved as an emergent property of sufficiently complex brains, the same as consciousness. You can also argue this with morality, using the evolution of cooperation & game theory (for more info about this, I highly recommend Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation and Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue).

Ultimately, this argument boils down to a quite simple refutation: It’s an “ipse-dixitism” fallacy that “If (x) exists, God must exist.” That’s just an a priori, unsubstantiated assertion. You could just as easily assert that “If (x) exists, Santa Claus exists.” The two aren’t causally or logically linked. Since (1) contains a fallacy, the argument is invalid, and cannot serve as a sound proof of the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God (or any other god or gods).

Until next time,

Dave

Category: Opinion, Religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Daniel Sprockett | September 11, 2011
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9/11 Changed the Face of Atheism

It has become almost cliché to say that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were the Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination of our generation.  Ten years later, nearly all of us remember what we were doing the moment we heard the news.  The day is seared into our collective memory not simply due to the emotional impact of the moment, but because of the startling realization that our lives would never again be the same.

The events of that day profoundly affected our way of life. Not just foreign policy or airline safety standards, but also our sense of security and our relationship to fellow human beings. For many people, it even changed their relationship with their god and religion.

The American Humanist Association’s most recent newsletter features one woman’s story of how 9/11 influenced her journey from Catholicism to Atheism. Diqui LaPenta, a biology professor in northern California, tells of losing her boyfriend, Rich Guadagno, on Flight 93, the flight that crashed in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania.

…My parents arrived two days later, having driven all the way from San Antonio, Texas, and we flew to New Jersey for a memorial service for Rich. Some very religious relatives planned to meet us in New Jersey. I asked my parents to ensure that those relatives refrain from religious platitudes. I didn’t want to hear that Rich was in a better place or with God or that it was all part of some plan that God had for us. From the moment I heard that Rich and thousands of others had been killed, I knew that the all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God of childhood stories absolutely could not exist. Rich was not in a better place. There was no place he would rather be than with his dog Raven, me, his family, and his friends. I would never see Rich again, as there is no afterlife. Pretending that I would see him again would make it impossible to heal.

Before 9/11, I’d never considered myself an atheist. After that day I was, and I let people know it. When asked what church I attend, I reply that I don’t. If prompted to explain why, I say that I’m an atheist. Some people say, “But you have to believe in something!” I do. I believe in the power of rational thought and critical thinking. I believe that we should live thoughtful, peaceful, moral lives because it’s the right thing to do and not because we’re afraid of punishment or hopeful for a reward beyond the grave. We have this one life, and we should make the best of it for the short time we are here.

Diqui isn’t the only one that felt compelled to be more forthright about her atheism after 9/11. As the CNN Belief Blog points out, the religious nature of the attacks provided the impetus for many atheists to come out of the closet and openly criticize previously unassailable religious beliefs.

Atheists were driven to become more vocal because of the 9/11 attacks and America’s reaction, says David Silverman, president of American Atheists. He says many atheists were disgusted when President George W. Bush and leaders in the religious right reacted to the attack by invoking “God is on our side” rhetoric while launching a “war on terror.”

They adopted one form of religious extremism while condemning another, he says.

“It really showed atheists why religion should not be in power. Religion is dangerous, even our own religion,” Silverman says.

Atheists are still the most disparaged group in America, but there’s less stigma attached to being one, he says.

“The more noise that we make, the easier it us to accept us,” Silverman says. “Most people know atheists now. They knew them before, but didn’t know they were atheists.”

In fact, atheists have gained so much public acceptance that David Silverman gave a public address this morning on the main steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, in an event hosted by the PA Nonbelievers.

While some atheists began speaking out, others began writing. As Newsweek reports, Sam Harris began writing his bestselling The End of Faith on September 12th, 2001 – directly in response to the attacks.  Harris’s recent blog post on the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks succinctly summarizes his perspective on the distance we have left to travel:

Ten years have now passed since many of us first felt the jolt of history—when the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. We knew from that moment that things can go terribly wrong in our world—not because life is unfair, or moral progress impossible, but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions of our ignorant ancestors. The worst of these ideas continue to thrive—and are still imparted, in their purest form, to children.

On the other hand, while some atheists began speaking out in public and openly critiquing religious ideas, others saw the attacks as a call for greater unity and love.  Chris Stedman, a Fellow for the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy, will be honoring those lost by spending today packaging 9,110 meals to be distributed to hungry children in Massachusetts.  As he stated recently in Washingtion Post’s On Faith:

9/11 will live on forever in our nation’s memory. We suffered an incomprehensible loss at the hands of extremists who believed that religious diversity must end in violence. But as people of diverse religious and secular identities, we can counter them with our unity. By building bridges of understanding, we can act on our shared values and learn-from and with one another-how to be our best selves.

No matter the reaction, the attacks on September 11th caused the public face of atheism to drastically change.  The 10 years since that day has seen many changes in way the world community approaches religion, but no one can say that religious beliefs are as protected from criticism as they were a decade ago.

Many non-believers have very strong opinions about the best way to prevent similar attacks in the future. Despite the ongoing debates, it seems clear to me that the courage to work with religious community groups in areas where our interests overlap, paired with the freedom to directly and openly criticize bad ideas wherever they occur in the public sphere, will be the tools that we must use to build a safer, healthier, and happier future.

Category: Activism, Current Events, Ethics, History, News, Religion, Religious Recovery | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Ellen Lundgren | August 30, 2011
26 comments

Living without Religion in Michigan

As news in my area, Grand Rapids just got its first Living without Religion billboard on US-131 North, just south of the Hall Street exit.

Jeff and Jen, giants in the CFI Michigan world.

Personally, I’m very excited that this new billboard is here. I hope more people learn about CFI and are able to come out and meet us. But at the same time, it’ll be interesting to see the public reaction since west Michigan is known to be pretty conservative.

Somehow I doubt there will be any vandalism (maybe I’m naive), but maybe there will be some interesting news coverage? Or your typical angry church goers causing a ruckus? We shall see over the next month or so.

Until then, check out Livingwithoutreligion.org for a really nifty video and campaign by Center for Inquiry.

Update: Local news Fox 17 covers the billboard in a video here.

Update: WZZM 13 video coverage with great responses by Jeff and Jen.

Category: Activism, News | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Ellen Lundgren | August 20, 2011
One comment

Saturday Morning Cartoons – Jesus the Morning After

via fistfulsofbacon.blogspot.com. Favorite part, the sign in the background.

 

 

Category: Humor, Saturday Morning Cartoons | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Nicholas Smedes | July 22, 2011
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Hark! Vanity Be Thy Name: God’s Influence ‘Hand of a Dictator’ Part 1


“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:3-5)

Declarations from the Bible were Moses was used as a conduit atop Mount Sinai preaching to the recently freed people of Israel. Now if I was going to create a religion that had some profitable promises I think I would make a few commandments along these lines. By making such commandments it keeps my followers loyal by putting my God ahead of the rest and lessening any competition from other Gods. I come to my next conundrum. Are these Holy Texts influenced by God or Humans anthropomorphizing another deity?

First I will approach this inquiry as if God is the influencing factor. Here we have this omnipotent, benevolent God. Christians place this God upon a pedestal as being the Creator of us and everything we see and do not see. God is endowed with all this power as being the self proclaimed “…Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Revelations 22:13). One thing I do not understand is why he needs humans to worship him? Then out of the close to seven billion humans on the planet only a bit over a billion people believe in the actual Christian God. If it is the Christian God that exists as the one true God, these odds mean that 6/7 people don’t know God exist or refuse/choose not to believe in him. These are horrible odds if one is playing a game of Russian roulette (if you can find a seven shooter).

Allow me to back this up a bit. If the holy texts are indeed influenced by the Christian God here is the scenario I see. God creates the Universe then waits roughly nine billion years and creates Earth [1]. He continues to wait four and a half billion more years and watches ancestral human little by little emerge from the sea to land, from the trees to the ground and begin to walk around [2].  The divergence of the Homo sapiens species from other primate ancestors is estimated at 250,000 years [3]. God reveals himself at 248,000 years into human’s evolution. After many God(s) have fallen and risen and still remain. It is the Christian God that comes in human form in a man named Jesus Christ and proclaims that he is God “…God was manifest in the flesh.” (1 Timothy 3:16). I guess if one calls God omnipresent this is a quick fix to explain away all this time that God was just sitting around rolling his thumbs for thirteen billion years or so. But to us this is a large amount of time to waste to create a lonely species that the majority will reject you for another god that is supposedly better or for no God at all. Why wait so long to reveal Himself? And then to reveal Himself to a primitive man in the Middle East rather than the learned people in, now modern day, China.

The next process is to insight a punishment to keep the followers scared of leaving while striking fear into those who reject God to believe in him and not to offend. The aggressor will be punished by being sent to hell. “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:41-42). If not a punishment there is the candy bar dangling in front of the follower with promises of eternal bliss in the afterlife. All one has to do is believe in Christ “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). God makes it rather easy to believe in him easier then filling out a Cosco membership.

The vanity of God is then maintained with the measurement system of sin. When it comes to sin pretty much anything can be forgiven which is good because humans would get too disgruntled with this forced guilt of always doing something wrong or being hypersensitive/attune to sin would make daily living unbearable. In Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” so this is the fine print, no matter what, no one is good compared to God. Even before the sin is committed or a good act performed God is still better. But the twist here is God is not subjected to his own laws he demands upon his subjects. No matter what God has already deemed himself as Good. So God is good when he kills the majority of mankind with a flood (Genesis 6:7) or allows slavery (Joshua 9:23), rape, and murder (Judges 10-24). Going back to sin, on the biblical standard humans sin a lot, but can easily be forgiven to allow for excused daily living, however blasphemy against the Spirit is the one unforgivable sin (Matthew 12:31-32).  The Christian God shows strong evidence of being a narcissist. Like a dictator one should not criticize God for fear of being struck down and sent to a tormented afterlife in hell for all eternity. Blasphemy against the Spirit being the unforgivable sin brings up similar instances of what happens in North Korea or China. Criticizing leadership gets one jailed or shot. Supposedly, God creates man with free will, but God condemns mankind if they refuse to follow Him. This vanity continues when God accepts/demands forced adulation or sacrifices displaying a dictatorship like appearance (Passages of worship: Genesis 22:1-2, Exodus 7:16, 23:25-26, John 4:23, Romans 12:1-2, Psalms 29:2, Jonah 2:8, 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, 2 Timothy 1:3, Hebrews 10:2, just a few of the many examples of prostration). From demanding a sacrifice of one’s favorite son or a plethora of goats and sheep the thirst for laud is unquenchable. Which for a deity that can allegedly make something from nothing why does he demand this obedience in His name? Albert Einstein has an exquisite quote on this idea of a God ruling through a system built on punishments and rewards: 

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death”

I ask again how does one explain such vanity in a deity? Is it God that is vain and we are made in his image and thus we are vain? Or do we ascribe our human behavior of vanity onto God? With God showing so many human emotions how can we trust a supreme being to help and guide us thru our own lives? If God is just as unstable as depicted in the Old and New Testaments does it really matter if He declares Himself ‘Good’ or ‘Alpha and Omega?’ Who is at fault with the Holy Text the writer and human error or God for not being more influencing or clear when speaking? By these faults alone is it not feasible to just treat the Holy Book as a work of fiction?

In my next essay I will look at the other half of my beginning inference. That the God of Christianity is human’s way of continued anthropomorphism and that Christianity is based on religions prior to the birth of Christianity. I will also critique some of the ways that man has helped with the evolution of Christianity to solidify Christianity in the history books rather an opposing religion.

 

References used:

[1] Age of the Universe

space.com

[2] Age of the Earth

United States Geological Society

[3] Age of Homo sapiens divergence as a species

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Bible passages from:

The Bible 

Category: Religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Elizabeth Knapp | July 11, 2011
4 comments

How do I know god is dead? Because I went to his funeral

The journey from faith to reason is not as easy as others may perceive. It is as brutal and heart-wrenching as any other funeral for a dead loved one. I was raised to believe that a benevolent consciousness had his eye on little-speck-on-the-earth me. I was raised to believe that my only joy could be serving him only, and my only purpose could be doing his will only. I was raised to believe that there was a higher plan that could make all the chaos, destruction and suffering in the world make sense–that my own suffering could make sense. That when I cried, Jesus cried with me. And realizing that god did not exist was like the time I realized my parents had been lying to me about Santa Clause…only it was about a hundred times stronger.

When you are raised to believe that god is the center of everything, he becomes the center of your internal, complicated universe. He was the center like the sun, and just as the universe would be throw into utter disarray if the sun was removed–when god was removed, my inner universe was shattered.
It has been a few years since I went to god’s funeral, enough time to rebuild my universe with real things, based on fact and not fiction. I’ve been able to find new meaning, new purpose, and a more gratifying reason for life. I’ve been able to find contentment, acceptance and peace. A peace that can be understood.

Grief for god has the same stages as any loss.

1. Denial – you dont want to believe it is true. You will do anything to deny it, and pretend you havent seen it for yourself.

2. Anger – you become angry at the world, at the people that lied to you, at the people that give you the facts, or even at your own self for doubting. You may even become angry at this “god” that will not answer you, not offer up proof.

3. Bargaining – “God, if you make these strawberries smell like pineapples, I will believe. If you just speak to me just once, I will believe. Show me a sign and I will believe in you.”

4. Depression – you can’t deny it anymore. It is true, and it hurts. Who am I, without god? What does life mean, without god? Can there be good or beauty without god? Does anything really matter anymore? I dont think I even want to live anymore, now that I know.

5. Acceptance – you realize that this world can still be beautiful, still be meaningful, and even be better without god. You are at peace, and you are ready to make your one brief moment in existence worthwhile to both yourself and others.

I am writing this for the ones that may be on the fence, or the ones that may be grieving at god’s tombstone right now, as I write. No matter what your decision may be, I hope you maintain your ability to critically think. Never let anyone try to asphixiate your curiosity. For the sake of yourself, and humanity.

Category: Opinion, Religion, Religious Recovery | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Ellen Lundgren | July 9, 2011
2 comments

Saturday Morning Cartoons

 

 

(Sorry it’s not morning… I actually woke up at noon so it’s still morning for me, okay? Cool.)
via The Far Left Side

 

 

Category: Humor, Saturday Morning Cartoons | Tags: , , , , , , ,