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X Amish Atheist

~ fighting dogma from behind the lines…

X Amish Atheist

Category Archives: The Amish

Amish Mafia: Fact or Farce?

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by xamishatheist in Breaking Amish, The Amish

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Amish Mafia, Breaking Amish, Discovery Channel


In December, the Discovery Channel came out with another outrageous “reality” show about the Amish. This time, they (their parent company also operates TLC which put out Breaking Amish last summer) claimed to be filming the Amish mafia (which is nonexistent, by the way) as it went about its business. The show is called Amish Mafia and I believe the finale has aired already.

I’ve been asked about the authenticity of the show and why I haven’t written about it like I did with Breaking Amish. Well, there are several reasons why I haven’t written about it. First of all, after seeing previews of the show, I didn’t think anyone would actually believe any of it. Secondly, while I was successful in putting the truth about Breaking Amish out there, it felt a little counter-productive because the resulting controversy increased the show’s viewership. Something is seriously wrong with us and our entertainment industry when lying to us makes entertainment companies more profitable than telling us the truth.

I was wrong about nobody believing the show. One Facebook poll (which is likely biased) of more than 2000 viewers, had rather surprising results. A full 41% of the voters believe the show is totally or mostly real, 45% think the show is totally or mostly fake, and 14% don’t care whether it’s real or not.

Another reason I didn’t write about the show is that I don’t personally know any of the cast. Often when there is a television show about the Amish, with ex-Amish cast, I know one or two of them. This time I didn’t. I’m going off on a little tangent here so bear with me; The world of Amish and ex-Amish is fairly small. Wikipedia puts the Old Order Amish population around 250,000. Any Amish person who gets around, knows people or has some connection to someone in almost every Amish community. If an ex-Amish person tells you that they know someone on one of these shows, then there’s a good chance he or she is telling the truth. I personally know about half a dozen Amish and ex-Amish kids that have appeared on a variety of these shows and I know quite a few more that declined parts in those shows. So far, I’ve only been asked by one production company to appear on an Amish reality show. I politely declined. End of tangent.

So on to the authenticity of Amish Mafia… The cast of the show appear to be real ex-Amish people but the reality of the show seems to end there. The whole idea of there being an “Amish mafia” that protects the Amish is ludicrous. I watched several of the episodes and found them to be highly amusing–the basic plot of the show is that amazingly farcical.

The Discovery Channel openly admits that the Amish deny the existence of an Amish mafia. Of course they’re just capitalizing on a conspiracy-oriented, fantasy-prone viewership that believes denial is proof of truth.

Before I get myself all worked up about it, I’ll just let a pair of renowned Amish experts tell you in their own words:

“My own view is this is trash TV. To call these shows documentaries is a fraudulent lie.” ~Donald Kraybill, professor at Elizabethtown CollegeĀ  and a prominent researcher of the Anabaptist lifestyle [link]

“When I first saw the trailer [for the show], I thought maybe it was a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit on reality television because it was so far fetched. My sense is this Amish mafia is about as real as the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in The Office.” ~Donald Weaver-Zercher, professor at Elizabethtown College and expert on the Amish [link]

I conclude this post with an update on Breaking Amish: The word on the street is that the production company is working on a second season of the show and they are currently filming in Pinecraft–the Amish community in Sarasota, Florida.

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Blogs by Amish and ex-Amish Writers

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Other, The Amish

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

amish, Amish writers, blogging, ex-amish, ex-Amish writers


If you really want to learn about the Amish and what it’s like to leave the Amish, a great place to start is reading blogs by Amish (some progressive communities allow computers) and ex-Amish writers. On this page I will show a list of some of these blogs. Be sure to favorite the page as I will be adding to the list as time goes on. If you know of a relevant blog that is not listed, please leave a comment with the link and I will add it to the list.

Please be respectful of these writers. Many of them are not atheist like I am and some of them are beginning writers.

Here they are, not in any particular order:

  • About Amish – by Saloma Furlong
  • Project 365 – by Katie Troyer
  • Pinecraft Sarasota – by Katie Troyer
  • Growing Up Amish – Anna Dee Olson
  • The Literary Party: The Poetic Life and Times of James Schwartz
  • Ex Amish Gal
  • Amish in the City Mose – Mose Gingerich
  • Ira’s Writings – Ira Wagler
  • A Joyful Chaos – Mary Ann Kinsinger
  • Amish Descendant Scholarship Fund
  • Der Reggeboge Freindschaft – Joseph Stalnaker

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The Genius Kid in Amish School

02 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Early Life, The Amish

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

amish, astronomy, education, genius, intelligence, IQ, parochial schools


My first eight years of education, and so far, my only “formal” education has been in an Amish parochial school. How quaint to have been educated in a small one-room Amish schoolhouse with about a dozen other students, you might effuse excitedly. Well screw you! Amish parochial school stunted my intellectual growth and that pisses me off.

When I was a young Amish boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, I was fascinated with the night sky. I looked to the stars and I marveled when comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997. I dreamed of becoming an astronomer or an astronaut but of course I knew that I would never become either of those–I was Amish. Sometimes I wished my parents were normal so that my dreams would have a fighting chance of becoming reality.

My Dad, who was a great father despite all the religious crap, gave me one of those little rotating star charts one Christmas. With a cheap pair of binoculars and that star chart, I spent many enjoyable evenings outside, identifying constellations and writing notes about individual stars and planets. I read many astronomy books and taught myself ‘stargazing’ until I was able to find most specific visible stars, several of the brighter nebulas, and of course the Andromeda galaxy and the visible planets.

Academically, I did well in the Amish parochial school compared to the other students. I found the work easy and would work ahead on my material because I found it fun. My Amish teacher didn’t find that amusing and warned me several times not to work ahead of the other students. One day she had enough of it and spanked my offending hand with a ruler. That day I learned that it was important not to take initiative and not to do more than is asked of me.

I was always the nerd in school. As soon as I had an individual lesson finished I would go to the small library along one wall and grab several books to read. Often during my schoolwork I would think of some subject (e.g. radio astronomy) that fascinated me and upon completion of my schoolwork, I would go to the bookshelf and select the “R” encyclopedia. After reading the entry I would go back and select several more encyclopedias so I could read related subjects or more in-depth entries. This behavior was of course not normal and the other Amish students, many of whom had nothing but religious books at home and didn’t particularly like reading, would mock me for it. I became used to the word “bookworm” being used like most people would use “child rapist”.

Many of the Amish in our community liked to hunt. The men were quite competitive about it and always bragged about who shot the deer with the biggest antlers. I felt compassion for the helpless animals and told my fellow classmates that I would never harm an animal. I quickly became used to the word “environmentalist” being used like most people would use “child rapist”. Of course I didn’t like being mocked and after many hours of heart-wrenching rumination, I decided that I would show them and would become a better hunter than any of them. Years later, I actually did.

One day while reading through our encyclopedia set at home, I learned that Jupiter had quite a few moons. I was amazed by this knowledge as I had only been aware of one moon up to that point. Some weeks later I mentioned this fact in passing to my fellow classmates. They informed me none too politely that there is only one moon. It didn’t take long for me to get used to “stargazer” being used like most people would use “child rapist”.

That evening I told my Dad what had happened when I tried to enlighten my classmates. My Dad told me gently that he believed me that Jupiter had more moons and told me that the other students just didn’t know any better. It wasn’t very consoling, I wanted my friends to like me, not my Dad. To me, the concept of intellectual superiority was alien. I was told that I was “good at school” and “good with numbers”. Nobody told me that I was smart. Nobody helped me understand why I was so different or how my weirdness would help me later in life.

I stopped gazing up at the night sky and I put away my star charts and astronomy books, thinking wrongly that it was something that only weird people do. I stopped reading so much, tried harder to fit in, and withdrew into myself, intellectually. To this day I would rather sit silent than correct, even a friend, a factual error that he or she has made. It is a tactic I learned in Amish school to appear normal.

I can’t help but think that if my parents had been a normal family and had provided me with the education that I needed and desired, I would be doing great things by now. I like the idea of freedom when it comes to the educational system. I fear that if primary education is restricted to only state-run or heavily regulated schools, we could end up with a propaganda problem down the road. But Christ! Being intellectually stunted in a religious school just doesn’t feel fair to me.

Many years after leaving the Amish, I discovered a webpage with an experimental high-range I.Q. test designed by a psychologist and research scientist. I decided to try the test and after working through the number sequence problems, I submitted my answers. A day or so later, I received my score report. According to the associated statistical report for that test my score equates (at least theoretically) to an I.Q. a little higher than 160 (s.d. 16). To the ***holes who mocked me in Amish school–take that! Now if only I could get over it.

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Evil Amish Bishops Drunk with Power

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

amish, Amish bishop


You have probably heard of the Amish beard-cutting incidents that took place in Ohio recently. If you haven’t, simply Google “Sam Mullet”. Sam Mullet is the bishop of an Amish splinter group in Ohio, members of which have been accused of religious hate crimes. Sam Mullet is the alleged ringleader of the hair-cutting attacks against other Ohio Amish.

The bishop holds the highest office in an Amish church. He is generally the leader of a single Amish church and presides over, on average, 20 to 30 Amish families.

Evil bishops that are drunk with power are uncommon but not unheard of among the Amish. Sam Mullet is a notable example. I also had a personal experience with such a bishop. In the community where I grew up there were a small group of us Amish kids (several boys and several girls) that were friends with each other and hung out together as often as possible. After I left the Amish, my house became a popular place for us to gather because we could watch television and drink alcohol whenever we could get our hands on it.

One of the girls in our group was a daughter of the community’s bishop. Of course he tried to keep her away from my house with threats and all manner of punishments but she was a rebellious girl and continued hanging out with us.

Then one day when I was alone at home this bishop came to my house and threatened me with physical harm if his daughter continued hanging out with us at my house. She was not yet eighteen but it wasn’t like I was forcing her to come to my house. Anyway, I decided if that bishop was going to heaven then heaven was no place that I ever wanted to be. I moved hundreds of miles away from that community not long after that.

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The Arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish, The Questioning

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

amish, Ordnung


Back when I was still an Amish kid, I was often frustrated with the arbitrariness of the Amish Ordnung (their set of rules). For example, our church banned the smoking of cigarettes because the body is supposedly a temple of God and should be treated that way. On the other hand, eating potato chips was perfectly fine. Shouldn’t obese people be punished if smokers are?

You can’t live life without subjecting your body to harmful substances and situations. Even hard physical labor can be harmful to the body. Where do you draw the line, I wondered. How about leaving it up to the individuals to self-impose arbitrary rules? Anything else just causes discontent due to the restriction of personal freedom.

The Amish focus on the bad possibilities of technology (e.g. Oh no! You can watch porn on computers – computers must be banned!) while completely disregarding the vast good that technology can bring. With technology, the Amish mentality is to blame the gun instead of the person that pulled the trigger.

On the other hand, they are arbitrary even with that mentality – they don’t apply it to everything. When Amish church members are caught having sex with farm animals, no one blames it on the cow. No one says the cows are being too flirtatious – no one advocates banning cows.

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Am I Unstable?

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amish, learning, unstable


During my 10-year transition from Christian to atheist, my belief system has undergone a number of significant changes. At first, I believed the Bible to be the inerrant and literal word of God. After discovering that some of the “facts” therein are just plain incompatible with reality as we know it, I transitioned to believing the Bible to be the metaphorical but divinely inspired word of God. Eventually I decided that the Bible is of little use and that God couldn’t possibly be like he is described therein. I started believing in a form of pantheism. Later I dropped that and became an agnostic – believing that there is not enough information to know whether God exists or not. Recently, I became an atheist – believing the complete lack of evidence for the existence of God does not justify being open to his existence any more than we should be open to the existence of Santa Claus – despite the possibility of the actual existence of God and Santa Claus.

Most Amish people would consider me unstable for changing my belief system so often. They’d use the word “unstable” in a manner that makes you think of a person with no mind of their own – extremely gullible and easily fooled by evil people. They use the word degradingly – as if speaking of an inferior person.

They warn people away from sites like this one in the fear that an “unstable” Christian reads it and becomes convinced that there is no God.

What the Amish call “unstable” is actually the result of “learning” and not of arbitrariness. Learning involves the acquisition of new information and the continual modification of one’s belief system based on the new information that is assimilated. To call a person “unstable” simply because they changed their belief system, is the equivalent of saying “learning is dumb”.

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“Pulling” Bellyaches: An Amish Medical Superstition

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amish, bellyache, folk medicine, nocebo effect, skepticism, superstition


There is a notion among some Amish that bellyaches (abdominal pain) can be “pulled” from another person. The notion is that, coming into physical contact with a person suffering from a bellyache will cause the bellyache to transfer to the new person.

In a show of empathy and altruism, a grown person will attempt to pull a bellyache from a suffering child or baby. Some Amish parents go so far as to judge the health of their babies by whether or not the parent gets a bellyache while holding the child.

I don’t think this medical superstition is widespread among the Amish, and it is also possible that it’s not restricted to the Amish. It’s just that on the few occasions I ever heard about it, it’s been an Amish person that has told me.

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The Amish Ordnung: High and Low

20 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

amish, Mennonite, New Order Amish, Old Order Amish, Ordnung


Each Amish church generally has its own Ordnung, or set of rules, which dictates the dress code, behavioral rules, and accepted technologies for that church and its members. Among the Amish, when it comes to comparing the Ordnungs of different churches, there is a concept of ā€˜higher’ and ā€˜lower’. A relatively conservative Ordnung or church is said to be ā€œlowā€ and a relatively liberal Ordnung or church is said to be ā€œhighā€.

When it comes to accepted technologies, some Amish churches allow electricity in the home and others don’t. When it comes to dress code, some Amish churches require the ladies to wear brown and black, while other churches allow them to wear brighter colors. When it comes to behavioral rules, all Amish churches ban divorce, abortion, and military service. Most of them ban civil lawsuits, birth control, and higher education.

An Amish church that does not allow indoor hot water plumbing may decide to put that technology up to vote. If they decide to accept the technology then the church has gone ‘higher’. While it does happen that an Amish church goes ‘lower’ it is more common for them to go higher.

We can think of it as a vertical scale with a dress code on one side of the scale and the accepted technologies on the other side. We can ignore the behavioral rules in this case because they are fairly uniform among the Amish. Some technologies and dress codes are traditionally higher on this scale than others. For example, an Amish church is more likely to approve the use of cellular phones than to approve the use of computers so in this case the computer would be higher on the scale.

The line between Old Order Amish and New Order Amish, and the line between New Order Amish and Mennonite aren’t really clear cut. While the image below is not completely accurate, it gives you a reasonable idea of the technological differences between New Order and Old Order Amish, and the relative position of the various technologies on the scale.

Technology Acceptance Among the Amish

A church that bans indoor hot water plumbing is considered to be fairly ā€˜low’. A church that allows the women to wear bright clothing and allows church members to have electricity in the home is considered a pretty ā€˜high’ church. This same implicit scale is often used to distinguish Old Order Amish from New Order Amish from Conservative Mennonites. The line between Old Order and New Order is somewhere between bicycles and home phones and the line between New Order Amish and Mennonites is somewhere between electricity and cars.

Non-Amish are commonly known as the ā€œEnglishā€ but they’re also called ā€œhochā€ (high, singular) and ā€œhoch-eeā€ (plural).

The Amish position on dress code and acceptance of technology is based primarily on two Biblical virtues – modesty and non-worldliness. Since the Bible does not specify exactly the dress code, or how one should be different from the world, each Amish church decides what is an acceptable dress code and which technologies are to be used and which are to be shunned. That’s why you have higher (more liberal) churches and lower (more conservative) churches among the Amish

While the higher Amish might tend to think the lower Amish are making things unnecessarily hard on themselves, and the lower Amish might tend to think the higher Amish are slipping off the right path, the terms ‘high’ and ‘low’Ā  themselves are generally not used in a derogatory manner. Wow that was a long sentence. I added these last two sentences only because apparently a single sentence does not a paragraph make.

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The Amish on Capital Punishment

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in The Amish

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

amish, death penalty, humanistic values, murder, redemption, repentance


The Amish, in general, oppose the death penalty. This is not because they bear some grand humanistic values, but quite simply because the Bible tells us, “Thou shalt not kill.”

The Amish believe the death penalty is murder. They also believe that murder is one of the worst sins (despite believing all sins are equally bad) because when you kill someone, you remove that person’s chance of repentance and redemption.

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Are There any Other Ex-Amish Atheists Out There?

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by xamishatheist in Other, The Amish

≈ 55 Comments

Tags

amish, atheist


I am a formerly Amish atheist. Life can get a little lonely when there’s no other person that you know of that shares your background and your skepticism. This post is a shout-out to ex-Amish atheists everywhere. We need to get together, socialize, and support each other.

If you’re an ex-Amish atheist or agnostic, please comment on this page so we can get to know each other. I have also started a group on Atheist Nexus for people like us. Please come and join me;

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/ex-amish-atheists

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