Just so you know: your Christianity is far less “peaceful” than you think.

I consider myself to be a realistic person, overall. While I may speak in hyperbole in my everyday life (“This is the best thing of all time! Do you hear me?! Of all time!” “Okay, I already looked for that, like, twelve billion times.”) I try to think and speak “professionally” as accurately as possible. I am well aware that outliers do not define a trend. I obviously don’t think that all Christians are violent, immoral, etc.

However: I do think that, pointing out the outliers, when it comes to safety, can be important.

See: Christians Openly Advocate Killing Atheists on FOX News Facebook Page

And, my personal least favorite:

Obviously, the people who are going to “Like” FOX News on Facebook will be a fringe group, probably angrier/more extreme than your average person. And when you add “Christianity” into the description, I’m honestly not surprised about this reaction.

I’ve had many different adverse reactions personally to my proud atheism. I’ve been told that I am a Devil worshiper many times. I’ve lost potential friendships. I’ve been cut off from my immediate family, communication-wise. Yes, this is extreme. But no, it is not uncommon. And, while I’m sure that there could be some atheist parents who would do the same if their child chose to become religious, I would think that this would be an extreme divergence from the norm.

I started this blog to share different views with people who probably haven’t thought about it before. So here it is: religion in general, and Christianity specifically in the Western world, has been the cause of death and destruction where atheism has not. I would seriously like to know what possible, bodily threat atheism is. Has it brought about genocide? Absolutely not. The list of Christian serial killers is far larger than the list of atheist serial killers. The list of Christian pedophiles can top any other list by just including the priesthood. This doesn’t bring up any spiritual text at all, nor any other religious group, most of which can all be counted to be violent or harmful in multiple ways. By any “moral” measure, atheists stack up as much more moral as a group than any religious group does. As Jen McCreight sums it up: “I know this doesn’t represent all Christians, but it certainly debunks the notion that religion automatically makes you a good person.”

So please, somebody explain it to me: why kill atheists?

(tl;dr: Wow, I didn’t expect to be so angry about this.)

Edited to add: I want to add this to make the purpose of my post very clear: I am genuinely interested in hearing from people of all religions, and especially Christians (as I live in the United States, and this is the religion of the majority) what about atheism can cause people to treat atheists so negatively, beyond just disagreement.

My past life experience from my life’s past

Image via Wikipedia

I need to stop with these excruciatingly terrible titles.

Almost a year ago, when I still identified as a Christian, I underwent a past life regression experiment with my sister and my brother-in-law. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I believed in the idea of past lives, but I decided to give the experience a try and see what happened.

What did happen was, as I was just explaining to my friend, “trippy.” I remember the feelings of wanting to fly but being unable to, and, most curious of all, I remember feeling as though I had a deep connection to Charles Darwin. (I had recently watched the movie Creation, which is about the life of Charles Darwin and which is extremely amazing.)

Of course, at this point in my life I’m assuming that most of the things that I experienced were either worries that I was having at the time or based on recent experiences of mine. I have undergone hypnosis once before, in a psychology class, and I remember having visions then, as well, but I also don’t remember much of the experience (I felt that I was sleeping for much of the time, which was apparently a half an hour). I know that this is generally how these experiences work, but it was still something interesting to go through.

And it was right- I do have an important connection to Charles Darwin. The connection of admiration.

For more information, you can visit the Skeptic’s Dictionary‘s page on past life regressions here.

Surviving the holidays, non-affiliated

Image via Wikipedia

So now, on the other side of it all, I can officially say- I’ve survived the holiday season for the first time as an unaffiliated person.

And it really wasn’t that hard.

I think that a lot of people have a vision of atheists as being anti-Christmas, or anti-religious-holidays in general. I can’t speak for the majority of atheists, but as for myself I have no problem with the holidays. If they are something that can bring families together or bring joy then that is an amazing and beautiful thing. Personally, the holidays brought my family together, in a sense. My parents ended up deciding to put off Christmas, because they decided to buy gifts for an entire women’s shelter and were kind of gifted-out. Despite this, my mom reached out to me and has decided that it would be okay if I celebrated with them when they decide to do something for the holidays, which I’m extremely excited about.

Of course, this brings up a few questions- will I pray with them? Will I go to church with them? I might not have to worry about the church anymore, as the Christmas Eve service that they attend regularly has already passed, but I don’t think that I would have gone with them anyway. As for prayer, I would probably bow my head with them and listen, but not “pray” per se.

This is similar to what I did the entire holiday season. While I did not attend midnight mass with some of my boyfriend’s family, I did bow my head when a prayer was said in respect for the people who do pray (this was also fun as I got to lock eyes and smile with the other non-religious persons at the meal). A big step that I also took was not denying my lack of faith. I admitted it to my boyfriend’s cousin, who ended up giving me a high-five. Later, my boyfriend’s parents asked me if I went to church, and I told them that I don’t anymore. While they didn’t look particularly happy (they’re somewhat practicing Catholics) they didn’t reprimand me or punish me in any way, which made me feel much more comfortable with being real and honest with them about who I am.

And, more than anything, it was nice to spend a holiday season focusing more on family and friends than on God. I’m happy to say that I came out on the other side still happy, still fulfilled.

Want to share your story about getting through the holidays? I would love to hear it:

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Unsupportive Support Group

It's like that, ya'll

I swear that I do not hate Christians. However, I do have a strong distaste for people who are rude (and if they happen to be a Christian, then I have to write about it on here, I mean, I have to).

A few weeks ago I was hospitalized for being and feeling suicidal. I stayed in treatment from Tuesday until Saturday night at 12:30 p.m. (when my told was officially up). While in treatment I met a lot of amazing people, both doctors and patients, who helped me to understand the help that I still need and get closer to being “functioning” again. Part of this “rehabilitation” for me is that I am now attending IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program), which is basically a lite version of being in the hospital; one goes to treatment for three hours a day, three times a week, for three weeks. My particular program includes goal setting, group therapy, and an “education” talk about different coping skills. Basically, it’s absolutely amazing and I love going there, and I am definitely learning more about my overall goal for myself, which is to be realistic, loving and forgiving towards myself.

My one iota of a complaint against the group is the presence of one particular member. Obviously, one member of the group can’t just be kicked out, especially this woman; she recently suffered a great loss, and if I were in her shoes I would definitely need the help of IOP if not a full-blown hospitalization to get over it.

However, it is not okay for a woman to be rude or unsupportive, especially in a support group.

A few days ago, on this woman’s first day, my therapist was speaking to me in front of the group about changing my negative thoughts into positive ones with imagery. She explained that she would not give me religious imagery, as she knows that I am an atheist. The woman (who was sitting right next to me, after I had smiled at her when she first walked in the door) immediately whipped her head in my direction, glared at me, and then turned away from me. After all of the group members were done speaking, she announced to the group that she was a Christian, and that she could not understand people who denied or hated God. To make matters worse, today she started yelling at another new girl in our group, a girl who professed to the group to being agnostic (though later she admitted to me that she is an atheist). Being fragile and sad, I immediately started crying (I hate when people are angry or yell), and, right on cue, the psychiatrist asked to see me in her office.

To make matters worse, I now have another diagnosis: Anxiety NOS, because I have symptoms and behaviors of both OCD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

All I can say is: today was cray cray.

Apologetics, Why Won’t You Apologize To Me

Stop trying to make "Jesus" work, Gretchen!

Just one day after my last post about friends proselytizing to me, I get another e-mail from a friend asking me to listen to an apologetics podcast.

I will say it once so I never have to say it again: apologetics is the desperate act of Christians trying to make sense of their faith, which will never make sense.

I am rather upset about this.

Here, take a hilarious video: