When I was 13 years old and still interested in being a good
Presbyterian, I came across a few issues with my Bible that no one was
willing to discuss with me. I kept finding lines telling me that I was
inferior to men, that I should submit to their instructions and
desires, that I should accept and learn from my father’s or my
husband’s punishments, like a child should from its parents and a
slave should from its master. I told my youth group leader I could
never tolerate that, that no man would ever be the boss of me and
would certainly never punish me. If I ever got married it would be as
an equal partner in a loving, mutually-respectful pairing, and I would
file for divorce at the first inkling that my husband thought our
family had a hierarchy. He tried to pull the same old bullshit that
you hear again and again–yes, wives are to submit to their husbands
and men are the default heads of households, but husbands are required
to love their wives as Jesus loved the church, so see, it’s all fair.
Moreover, in the rearing of children it is necessary for someone to
have the final say in any decision, so see, you need your husband to
be in charge. I refused to accept that–I would never worship my
husband as the church worshipped Jesus, and didn’t think having a
willy justified the overturning of my own decisions–particularly if
my decision was better. I was eventually told “well too bad, that’s
God’s will,” to which I retorted “well I’m terribly sorry but God is
wrong.”
"The realization that many religious rules were written for the express
purpose of repressing me unclouded my vision regarding the church.
After the credibility of their central text collapsed it was then
really only a matter of time before the rest of my mind found peace
and sense in atheism. I was doused in religion from infancy, and a
good deal of the bullshit regarding omniscient beings reading my every
thought had already taken hold. It was hard to shake free of this
Thoughtcrime training, and led me to feeling unhinged for many years.
I’m sure many would-be rationalists have eventually caved under the
nagging sensation that Santa Claus is reading along and does not
approve of what you’re thinking. Religion is brain damage, a type of
forced schizophrenia–church leaders carefully insert another voice in
your head to constantly judge you against their bizarre rubric. A
voice which can be difficult to silence until you learn that it is not
your conscience or the voice of God–it is a result of brainwashing,
and it should be a crime.
"I met with plenty of resistance on my way out of religion–from
screaming matches with my mother to physical abuse from my father to
other children shunning me for my views on evolution, women’s rights
and contraception (this was South Carolina in the 90′s, after all). I
had always been an astronomy geek, and when I pointed out in school
that the mere existence of other galaxies pretty much debunked the
whole “our group of our species on our planet was created specially by
the master of the whole universe in his image” bupkis, I discovered
just what it feels like to be alone.
"Even now, getting toward twenty years later, relations with my family
are strained. I moved to London in 2009, after spending an Erasmus
year in Canterbury in 2004 and discovering just how happy and sane
secular British society is compared to where I grew up. I’m engaged to
a man who never had to fight his way out of theism, something I’ve
always envied. He wasn’t rebelling or atheistic to be cool, as there
was no familial or cultural precedent for him to rebel against. The
issue just never came up. In his company (and country) I stopped
hearing the garbage, stopped having to fight for quiet from the
hate-based tribalism that chokes rational thought and prevents peace
among cultures. When my fiancé’s aunt asked if there were any nice
halls or historic buildings in our borough for us to get married in I
felt positively dizzy with happiness–no one assumed we were going to
a church, and no one expected us to do it “just to keep up
appearances”. For the first time, here in the UK, I’m not living a
lie.
"I am free and it feels wonderful.
Ms. Kristen G
England
We might presume the charges of physical abuse from her father and mental abuse from her mother to be the motivation for rejection of their dominance and for Kristen’s drive for total autonomy. But before she mentions that, she discusses feminism and victimhood even at the age of 13. She claims that religious rules have the ” express purpose of repressing me”. This has a paranoiac smack to it, one of victimhood rather than a rational rejection of reasons to believe there to be a first cause for the universe. More evidence for that is here:
” It was hard to shake free of this Thoughtcrime training, and led me to feeling unhinged for many years.I’m sure many would-be rationalists have eventually caved under the nagging sensation that Santa Claus is reading along and does not approve of what you’re thinking. Religion is brain damage, a type of forced schizophrenia–church leaders carefully insert another voice in your head to constantly judge you against their bizarre rubric. A voice which can be difficult to silence until you learn that it is not your conscience or the voice of God–it is a result of brainwashing, and it should be a crime.”
Now, either her church leaders were evil psychological manipulators on the one hand, or perhaps Kristen actually was unhinged, since she felt that way: brain damaged, schizophrenic, with voices that are neither hers nor God’s. The issue seems to be the issue of an internal moral restraint, one constantly there and completely unwelcome, a judgment mechanism internal to her and thoroughly resented because of the schizophrenic desire to determine her own code of behaviors. Would she collapse under cowardly submission to the odious control of the external morality? Or would she bravely and successfully free herself to pursue whatever she wished?
Not one for submission in any circumstance, Kristen’s solution was to reject that external morality, and all sources of that morality, and to ferociously fight for relief from it. Her autonomy was found in the void of principles which are found in Atheism.
Her one (obligatory?) reference to science is to astronomy:
” I had always been an astronomy geek, and when I pointed out in school that the mere existence of other galaxies pretty much debunked the whole “our group of our species on our planet was created specially by the master of the whole universe in his image” bupkis, I discovered just what it feels like to be alone. “
Using the contingent factoids of science as support for an ideology is always hazardous. But it is even more so when the factoids used are either wrong or irrelevant. The current “knowledge” is that there are an “astronomical” number of earth-like planets in the universe, and possibly there is life associated with many of those. There is no reason to associate these things with unnecessary ecclesiastic sub-beliefs. Non Sequitur.
But finally Kristen has found the peaceful retreat from the moral system she hates:
“In his company (and country) I stopped hearing the garbage, stopped having to fight for quiet from the hate-based tribalism that chokes rational thought and prevents peace among cultures.”
She is free. Unwittingly however, she is free from rational thought too. That happens when one becomes autonomous from all absolutes.
If tribalism is an exclusive us vs. them cultural arrangement, then denominationalist ecclesiasticism qualifies as tribalism. But if the inclusion of all peoples into the fold is a principle of a deity, then the charge of tribalism folds, and so does denominationalism. The charge of tribalism thus holds no sway over anything but human institutions; it has no reach or meaning for judging a deity.
And judging a deity is itself a position which only has meaning if it is decisively known that there is no deity. Judging an existing, active deity would be both silly and hazardous. Yet the assertion of "no deity" is not and cannot be shown to be actual knowledge; it is without either evidence or logic to support it. And Kristen gives none. Hers is not a rational position.
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