The Devout Who Have Nothing

I've been on hiatus for quite a while now. We've secured an apartment, but I've spent the last six weeks homeless. I didn't get nothing out of it, though; I definitely got a bird's eye view into the religious life and how much the homeless rely on God to get through the day. I will explain later why I felt utterly offended hearing just how much they did.


So for those of you who don't know, I live near the Detroit area. I live in Warren about a golf ball's whack from the ghetto. Being homeless in this area was quite an experience, after my fiance lost his job and we lost our home, it took us a while to recover again. In the meantime, we spent four weeks in an emergency rotating shelter program where we stayed at respective churches for a week at a time. The MCREST program (Macomb County Rotating Emergency Shelter Team) allows those in need to get three square meals a day and a warm place to sleep for thirty days while they search for work and housing. It's a wonderful program, as long as you can keep your mouth shut about being an Atheist.

So at the second to last church, I sat at a 'prayer circle' every day to support a friend of mine who believes in God, who is going through a hard time in her life. I wasn't opposed to it because I can't be brainwashed, so it was just silly to me to hear the things I was hearing. Every evening at 9 PM, they would light a candle and take out sheets of paper with prayers and sermon excerpts and music on them and play the same song every day at the beginning. It wasn't even a moving song. The themes were sometimes practical like 'hope', but rarely, for they usually had nothing to do with being homeless, rather than being religious-- usually the theme was something like 'preparing for the coming of God and his Kingdom', et cetera, et cetera, the same old dull horse crap.

So everyone that shared stories there talked about how God had helped them get through the day that day. The only thought in my head was 'How are you so sure it was God? Why can't you just credit yourself with having made it through the day because you're capable of doing it, without divine help?' Why is God SO infallible? Of course I understand that if he did exist, it would be beyond my comprehension, that he would allow people to be homeless and suffer for a greater purpose that humans wouldn't understand. I never use 'Well suffering exists,' as a justification as to why God does not exist. That may be my Taoist view that evil and suffering are as necessary as 'good' and pleasure.

But they constantly asked me about who I wanted pray for, and then would interject they'd pray for me and my daughter, and babble about how 'prayer always helps', how it obviously works. The head of the prayer circle offered her story:  how she 'prayed vigorously for three months for something to happen that she wanted to happen, and then it did, so the prayer obviously worked'. This follows the rule that if God's answers are only 'Yes, No, and Wait', and you never know which until you get or don't get what you want, then God is always right because there's no way that prayer can be proven to not work if 'wait' is an option.

Except that they pretty much did disprove prayer by testing it on sick patients, for which it had NO affect on any of them.

Anyway, I realized during those six weeks how absolutely different organizations like the Alano club (I'm not an alcoholic, but it was a warm place to stay while I was homeless), or homeless agencies and churches (if you're there for a secular, non-religious reason like shelter) assume that you believe in God without a blink toward the idea you may not. I was never swamped by more religious babble in my life.

The ultimate reason I was bothered by the message of the prayer circle was the repetition of the idea that 'We must rely completely on God. He will always be there for us, he will always get us out of the darkness. We must put ourselves in his hands and let him make our choices. . .' like we're sickly disabled people who can't rely on themselves, and yet all of the people sitting there were homeless.

I get utterly offended at this sort of helpless mentality.

What do you think about those in extremely impoverished or sickly states relying on God so wholly?

Pastors who don't believe in God

Pastors who don't believe in God

Atheist in the Pulpit

Makes me wonder if any of the pastors I used to know are actually closet Atheists.

Does the Bible Treat Women as Inferior to Men?

This isn't meant to be very extensive, it's simply a clipping from a debate I was having with a (thankfully) open-minded Christian about the contradictions in the Old Testament that led to women being treated as inferior creatures to men. Here was my two cents when he told me that men were equal to women and that wives were meant to be loved and treated properly (well-intentioned, but wrong):

Well it's odd you point out that men are supposed to love their wives, and that women are supposed to be equal, when throughout biblical history (and indeed, throughout the Bible) women are treated as inferior *because* of the passages conc...erning women being created as a companion only, and because of her transgression with the fruit (when in fact in the Bible, it's both of their faults equally, not hers). Because we're discussing the Old Testament (and I think we can both agree that Jesus himself is perhaps one of the only characters in the Bible NOT oppressive to women; but that isn't the topic here), let's review how the old testament views women as needing to behave:

•Unmarried women were not allowed to leave the home of their father.
•Married women were not allowed to leave the home of their husband.
•They were normally restricted to roles of little or no authority.
•They could not testify in court.
•They could not appear in public venues.
•They were not allowed to talk to strangers.
•They had to be doubly veiled when they left their homes.

Why is this happening? Let's stop back at what you call 'grasping for straws'. In the first version of the creation myth, man and women are created at the exact same time (So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. - Genesis 1:27). But that's not the version that is taught today, nor what perpetuated throughout Christianity's history. What is normally referenced is the second version of creation, which lists females as inherently inferior to men because they were created second as a companion to the man.

...the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Realizing that he needed a helper (Genesis 2:18), God marched all of the animals past Adam (Genesis 2:19-20) looking for a suitable animal. Finding none suitable, God created Eve out of one of Adam's ribs.

Let's examine the word 'helper', which is how Eve is referred to. There are two points that combat that Eve was supposed to be equal in this second myth. The first is that God's first choice of 'helpers' are animals. In the Bible, it is quite clearly stated that man has dominion over animals, and that animals are therefore inferior to men. This automatically groups Eve in with an inferior group. The second, and evidence that supports this, is that of the twenty one times in the Old Testament the word 'helper' is used, twenty of them refer to a superior and inferior relationship between the subjects. Oh, and let's not forget a third:

In Genesis 2:27, Adam later asserts his authority over Eve by naming her: "...she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

In ancient times especially, in the Biblical era, the way one asserted their dominance over something, and their superiority, was to be responsible for naming it. If man and woman were truly equal, God would have named woman the same as he named man. But he left that up to Adam, because presumably, Eve was his property at that point.

"...thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." In two other version of the Bible where the wording is changed, one replaces 'rule' with 'master' and another replaces it with 'dominate', but they all mean the same thing.

"And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do." --- there are numerous passages of fathers being able to choose the fate of a daughter without her consult, the same as his wife, or even his concubine (which many passages in the Bible permit). Women in the Old Testament had little to no rights, and this can be proven by simply reading it. Anyone who has flipped through Leviticus is aware of how inferior women are treated.

But that's just the Bible, right? Hardly. In the last century, the Church apologized for labeling Mary Magdalene a prostitute, which was never actually stated in the Bible--- it was done by an early pope hoping to keep females out of religious circles by making them appear in even more inferior positions in the Bible, and also to preserve Jesus' chastity (which we know now is in question).

Quotes from Christian leaders that have reflected this inferiority:

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman......I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children." (Saint Augustine)

"If they [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth, that's why they are there." (Martin Luther)

"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence." (Saint Thomas Aquinas)

Divorces are only permitted by men in the Old Testament, female babies being sold are worth less than male babies, a woman who bears a male child is unclean for one week whereas she's unclean for two weeks if she bears a female (because females are viewed as dirty/unclean).

I could go on forever, but I won't.

So I'm curious, women: What do you think about how the Bible treats you? Sisters, mothers, wives, girlfriends, cousins, daughters, and bearers of children?

Being "Atheist": What is it?

Curious and open-minded religious subscribers are usually filled with a lot of questions to 'nonbelievers'. What is it to be an Atheist? What does it mean? How can we not believe we were created uniquely by a loving designer? Can the godless still be moral?

When you ask an Atheist why they are what they are, you will usually get the response that they simply do not subscribe to the myth of a deity--- of any religion, including Christianity. As Richard Dawkins said quite eloquently about being Atheist,

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Although it's true the Atheism first describes a person that does not believe in God (a, meaning without, negates theism; 'without a god'), it also tends to involve a person who does subscribe to at least one belief: evolution. Atheists do not simply believe in nothing. We are not blundering idiots wandering around saying "I have no idea why we're here at all because there are no alternative theories to intelligent design." Quite the contrary, again as Dawkins may add here, Intelligent Design is creationism in fancier clothing, and still does not constitute an 'alternative theory' to evolution; it is not a viable theory at all. Just because evolution has gaps or can't explain everything precisely does not make it wrong; it is the only feasible explanation we have, and as an Atheist I prefer to subscribe to something that occurs naturally with physical evidence to support it.

I believe that a major cause of more people not being Atheist is an honest lack of understanding of the evolutionary theory to start; it is common among fear-mongering Christians to remark that they did not come from monkeys. Well, let's be very fair: an ape is not the same thing as a monkey, and yes, you are an ape. I will talk about that in a later post and explain it as thoroughly as a non-biologist can. Anyway, my point here is that Atheists are not blundering neanderthals, we are educated people that simply have a different view of how we got where we are today (and while I will probably offend many of you with this, I will venture to say the correct view--- or the closest to correct view as humanly possible at this time). All Atheists, like Christians, are different within their identification, too-- there are liberal Christians who don't take the Bible word for word, for instance. Well, some of us are religiously tolerant and simply accept having an 'alternative view' of the world, while others, such as Dawkins himself, are more militant atheists that would like nothing better than to see the problem of religion eradicated. I lean more toward Dawkins' idea, but you will see that pattern throughout this blog.

So how can we be good, moral people without being God-fearing?

Well that isn't difficult. It doesn't take an Atheist any more effort than a Christian to demonstrate moral; moral is not inherent only in religion. An Atheist is a criminal because he is an Atheist no more than when a Christian commits a crime motivated by his religion--- oh, well, minus the Inquisition and Crusades and other horrific acts of torturous purification committed by religious groups, not to mention the current problem with suicide bombers screaming about Allah---rather, because his divine immortality isn't riding on the shoulders of a deity and he has little motivation to commit a crime just because he does not believe in God. But it is true of both murderers who are religious and those that are Atheist: there is simply something deeply wrong with them that is not related to their choice of faith or lack thereof. A 'bad' person is a 'bad' person; no matter their religion, they would find a way to justify a crime they would commit anyway.

It is a general consensus among Atheists that we would rather be good people because we're good people than good people because we're worried about burning in a lake of fire. We don't want to be good out of fear, but out of simply being that way to begin with. Using fear to make people behave does not work; it has the same effect as Prohibition or marijuana being illegal: outlawing something, including dubbing things as 'sinful' that will have you sent to Hell, only causes people to be curious to indulge in those sorts of behaviors more than they would if it were allowed in moderation.

All that being said, I am just like everybody else on this planet. I am the daughter of a man and woman, I am the sister of some brothers, I am a cousin to some, a niece to others, a lover to a single man--- and to just one little girl on this earth, I am a mother. Ask me how I can be moral when I am like most good people:  I simply am. A good mother needs to be.

So what is it to be Atheist? To be Atheist is to use logic to explain the world and not mythology, to both ourselves, and to our children.