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X Amish Atheist

~ fighting dogma from behind the lines…

X Amish Atheist

Category Archives: The Conversion

Despising God

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in My Philosophy, The Conversion, The Questioning

≈ 44 Comments

Tags

atheism, Bible, Christianity, God, Secularism, Worship


As atheists, we are sometimes posed the question; If the positive existence of God was proven to your satisfaction, would you worship him? My answer to that question is; No.

Now, before you assume that my reason for rejecting God is personal, rather than epistemological, let me assure you that I believe wholeheartedly that the God of the Bible does not exist. My reason for believing so is quite simply that I do not find that the evidence warrants a belief in the existence of such a God.

When I first began questioning the existence of God, I was racked with guilt. I believed that my questions were blasphemous and that blasphemy was an unforgivable sin but I could not quell them.

As time went on and the questions became more pronounced, I began to wonder how a being intelligent enough to create this universe, could torture someone like me for all eternity. According to the Bible, I was headed straight for hell. I didn’t feel evil.  All I ever wanted was to know the truth. How could an all-powerful being, torture me for following the truth? Was it really my fault if circumstances conspired to make me question his existence? How could he hide from me and then punish me for not believing in him? If he was God, could he not easily convince me beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he exists?

At the time, I still wanted God to exist. I feared an existence devoid of such a protector. I concluded that if God really did exist, then he must be nothing like he is portrayed in the Bible. I could not believe in a benevolent God and in hell at the same time. I could not believe that an omniscient being would resort to eternal torture.

As time went on, my definition of God shrinked until it vanished into nothingness. I no longer believe in the existence of God, benevolent or otherwise. I do not believe that the God of the Bible exists. I do not even believe that anything remotely god-like exists. If something god-like actually does exist, I would find it hard to believe that it would be like the God of the Bible. However, I can look at the hypothetical, ‘What if the God of the Bible really exists’ and develop an opinion of such a God.

The God of the Bible can be blamed for the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of people. He can be blamed for rapes, pillage, plunder, slavery, child abuse, and rampant destruction. He tells us that happiness can be achieved by smashing children against rocks, and he tells us that homosexuality is evil. Since he takes credit for it, we might as well blame God for all the natural disasters, evil, and suffering that humanity and the animal kingdom have ever endured. It doesn’t stop there. God claims that he’s really a nice guy and we have to worship him or else he will torture us for eternity.

After I stopped believing in God and my case of Stockholm Syndrome faded away, I stopped seeing the God of the Bible as a benevolent being, and started seeing the things that are really written therein. Any person or being that engages in the things that are attributed to God, is unimaginably evil in my opinion. As a matter of moral principle, I would never worship such a being. At this point, I believe I would rather be a martyr and be tortured for eternity, than to worship a narcissistic terrorist like God. Oh, and by the way… if I was God, I would be way nicer!

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Suicide: Exploring the Afterlife

01 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Metaphysics, My Philosophy, The Conversion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

adventure, agnosticism, life, pantheism, suicide


There was a short period of time in my life when I was somewhere between pantheism and agnosticism. This was when I no longer held the dogmatic belief that suicide is inherently morally wrong but I had yet to release all hope for an afterlife. It was during this period that I toyed with the idea that suicide would be the ultimate adventure (I never actually seriously considered doing it myself).

Suicide: The Game of Life

Suicide: The Game of Life

I no longer believe in an afterlife but I still hold a small secret admiration for those that take their own lives. Many people call them cowards. I call them courageous. I would never commit suicide while I was physically healthy, but that’s partially because I’m a coward but mostly because evolution selected strongly against such tendencies–in other words, I don’t want to. Also, I’m a bit of a nihilistic fellow so I think suicide would be just as pointless as living. Why bother killing yourself? Even that is ultimately pointless.

If you believe in an afterlife, wouldn’t suicide be the ultimate adventure?

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Why Does God Require our Belief?

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

faith, God


For God it is not enough that we are good and moral people. For God, we must be good and moral people and believe in God, in order to escape hell. This fact is one that drove me from Christian to agnostic. I just plain don’t like the type of person that demands you believe in him while he hides from detection. What is he? Some kind of a**hole?

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Pascal’s Wager: Is God the Safe Bet?

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion, The Questioning

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christianity, God, Pascal's wager


When I was younger and just beginning to question the existence of God, one of the arguments that always seemed to sway me back to Christianity is one that was first developed by Blaise Pascal; a philosopher, mathematician, and physicist that lived in the 17th century. The argument is called “Pascal’s Wager” and it goes something like this;

If you’re not sure that God exists it is still better to believe and live your life as if he exists than to not do those things. If you believe in God and he turns out to be nonexistent, you’ve lost nothing. If you believe in God and he does exist, you get eternal life. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God and he turns out to be real, you’ll burn in hell forever. Obviously, the rational bet is to believe in God.

When I was talking with my Christian girlfriend about God recently, she brought up this argument and I was reminded of the fact that I have also used it. I started wondering why it no longer seems like a rational bet to me.

Pascal’s wager only makes sense if there is some evidence of God’s existence. It is only convincing to those that believe the odds of God actually existing are about 50/50 or better. As adults, we aren’t “good” simply on the off chance that Santa really exists. In much the same way, an atheist or an agnostic thinks the Christian God is such a ridiculous idea that it doesn’t merit even the slightest change in behavior on the off chance that God exists and that you’ll be rewarded for your behavior.

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Thoughts on God by an ex-Amish Heathen

17 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amish, atheism, evil, ex-amish, God, thoughts


The following are some thoughts that I noted in my handheld over the past year or so. It is interesting to wonder what I was going through at the time… The most recent notes are at the top.

March 12, 2012, 7:45 PM

I wish God would stay the f*** out of my life.

November 17, 2011, 1:47 AM

Shouldn’t the Army also have chaplains for all the other religions?

September 10, 2011, 6:46 PM

Amish boy to atheist man: On the one hand, life becomes less meaningful and less serious. On the other hand, there can be no more afterlife goals.

August 3, 2011, 3:34 AM

Which is more important, truth or belief?

July 13, 2011, 12:13 AM

Very few statements make less sense than, “I wasn’t hallucinating!”

(I bet I was thinking about the religious visions that some people claim to experience.)

June 12, 2011, 10:25 PM

Conventional behavior bears no resemblance to rational behavior.

April 19, 2011, 2:53 AM

The difference between the theist and the agnostic: The agnostic accepts the unknown simply as the unknown while the theist anthropomorphizes the unknown for a variety of reasons ranging from 1) a lack of independent thought, 2) a need for companionship, and 3) a fear of the unknown… Even false hope is comforting.

Date and Time Unknown

I do not believe a supreme being would design a universe that operates according to rules of logic… and then hide from logic.

I also do not believe a good supreme being would punish someone for reaching a logically valid conclusion given the available information.

A God that punishes its subjects for a logically valid conclusion… is an evil God that I want no part of!

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Becoming an Atheist

14 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

atheism, atheist, belief system, logic, rationalization


At first it starts with a nagging question – an inconsistency or a contradiction that you notice in your belief system.

Then you rationalize. It’s usually not that difficult to rationalize – to invent something that makes sense with the rest of your belief system. Your religious beliefs will survive this rationalization – they’ll just have to endure a minor tweak.

Then you have more nagging questions. You realize that even your tweaked belief system is not sufficient to withstand the inquiry of an intelligent mind. Frantically you make more rationalizations and for a time, everything makes sense again.

And then of course you hit upon a new idea and a new question pops up. Once again you rationalize. This process keeps going on for several years. Your belief system gains some patches and a whole lot of little tweaks. Your rationalizations have become quite complex.

At some point you suddenly realize that your beliefs about God are way different from that of everyone else around you. But this is fine, you’re comfortable with this because it makes you feel good to have calmed the cognitive dissonance with your rationalizations.

The questions don’t stop there. In fact, the more you learn about science and philosophy, the more questions you get and the harder they become. You start redefining your beliefs even more. Your God starts becoming smaller and smaller. What you’re doing is learning more and more about the universe and relegating God to the gaps in your knowledge. If you’re lucky, you will have started learning about logic and you will suddenly realize that your beliefs about God are based not on evidence but on arguments from ignorance.

Eventually, you realize that your belief system is the definition of “agnostic”. You don’t tell your friends about your new label but you don’t feel awfully guilty about your beliefs either. After all, what could be the harm in admitting that you don’t know?

Then you start playing devil’s advocate. You debate against your religious acquaintances hoping that they can prove to you that God really exists. They fail miserably.

Mentally you start scoffing at your friends’ beliefs whenever the subject of religion comes up. It is around this time that you realize what you’ve become. An atheist! Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel all that evil. You don’t suddenly have the urge to rape and to kill. Actually, you start feeling better about yourself once you realize that your morality is real and not just a fear of eternal torture.

Becoming an atheist is not a single decision that a person makes nor is it a single point in time. Becoming an atheist is a long journey that often happens over the course of many years. For me it was about 10-12 years from the first serious question I had to when I was first comfortable considering myself an atheist.

Just remember, you were born an atheist!

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Water Divination

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Conversion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

dowsing, ideomotor effect, placebo effect, skepticism, water divination, water witching


Water divination (or water witching or dowsing) was taught to me at a fairly young age by my Father. I turned out to be a natural at it. I’d simply take two heavy-gauge wires about two feet long and bend both into an ‘L’ shape. I would hold a wire in each hand – the short portion of the ‘L’ in my hand. I would hold my closed fists about a foot apart with the wires sticking out in front of me.

I should note here that many Amish don’t like the idea of water witching because they fear that it is a gift from the devil (just like magic supposedly is). My Father apparently didn’t share that view.

To find water I would start with the wires pointing away from me and parallel to each other. Then I would simply walk around slowly. If I crossed an underground water stream, the wires would slowly swing toward each other until they crossed.

I was quite good at divining for water. If I’d test myself by walking toward a jug of water that I had placed on the ground for exactly that purpose, the wires would cross when they went over the jug. The same held true when I divined near our well or above known underground water pipes.

I went as far as to walk around our property with pen and paper and map all the underground waterways beneath our property. I was so good at it that I even demonstrated my skill at school. Some of my fellow students were skeptical at first but they all believed me when half of them discovered that they too had the gift. Excitedly, we took turns with the wires – walking over bottles of water and proving ourselves over and over again.

Nobody knew exactly how water divination worked but it was my older brother’s notion that it had something to do with the Earth’s magnetic fields and how it flowed through water, metal, and the human body. To my mind, it seemed like a plausible explanation and so I ascribed to his “theory”.

It wasn’t until years later (I was probably around 20 years old) when I decided to look into the scientific research in the field of water divination. What I found troubled me greatly. For such a useful physical phenomenon I expected considerable and positive research being done on it. What I found instead, was that researchers consistently, statistically proved that there was no such thing (or at least they proved that “skilled” water diviners did no better than chance on average).

By this point in my life, I had grown quite fond of mathematics – even the rather indefinite field of statistics. It troubled me to think that mathematics didn’t agree with me.

So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands and test it myself. I found a jug, filled it with water, and placed it in the backyard. Then I found some wires, bent them into the appropriate shape, and started witching.

What I discovered was astounding. I had completely lost my talent. The simply wires refused to cooperate. They wouldn’t cross over the jug unless I really really willed them to.

My mind went back to rebuttals I had heard other water deviners make when questioned. “It doesn’t work unless you believe in it.” Still, why would it not work for believers who try it in front of scientists?

I was getting really suspicious now. I found a piece of wood and drilled holes so that I could place the wires into the piece of wood and in that way I could divine for water without touching the wires. What I discovered was quite interesting.

Since I had drilled the “holder” holes straight down into the wood (the holes were vertical and almost perfectly parallel), the wires could not cross. They would both swing one way or both swing the other way, but they would not cross.

I took them out of the piece of wood and held them in my hands once again. This time I was interested in the mechanics involved in getting the wires to cross. After playing around with them for a bit, I realized that when I held the wires and they crossed, it was not because they were swiveling due to some attraction between the long tips of the wires, they were crossing because the top of my fists tilted almost imperceptibly toward each other causing the tips of the wires to slowly fell toward each other by gravity’s force alone. In retrospect, this is all blindingly obvious but if you really believe in something it almost requires a punch in the face to accept the opposite.

At this point I started seriously considering the possibility that I had fooled myself all those years. Could it really be that it was only my will causing my fists to tilt imperceptibly and cause the wires to cross?

Back to the computer I went and to the Wikipedia article about water divination. After reading carefully the possible explanations, I learned about the ideomotor effect. The ideomotor effect described exactly what I had been starting to suspect – that the whole thing was my will causing my fists to tilt imperceptibly and the wires to cross.

It was at this point that I started seriously studying the ideas related to skepticism. What I learned about the placebo effect and the other myriad ways that the human mind fools itself, had even more of an effect on me than learning about the ideomotor effect. Within weeks my well rationalized belief system was crumbling and my mind kept going to the Weird Al song, Everything You Know is Wrong.

All Amish kids of my generation know Weird Al’s songs because of Amish Paradise. Check it out, I think it’s quite hilarious…

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Is God Evil?

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Other, The Conversion

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

dream, evil, God, hell


Visualizing the Amish God as evil – as something I never wanted to associate with, was helpful in my transition from a questioner to a full-blown atheist.

Here is an appropriate little graphic that I put together from a variety of images I found online.

God's Dream About Hell

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