Old Ways Die Hard

I used to be catholic. Shocking, I know, but true. I used to be not only a catholic, but a good Catholic with a capital C, with Sunday school and everything. I even tried my hand at a little good ol' conversion of the heathens, though without much success.

It wasn't until I moved away to college that my eyes opened to see a big wide world out there where I couldn't rationalize the existence of god/s any longer. I lived across the street from a catholic church without attending a single time in two years, though I think I went to a final mass at christmas of my sophomore year and my sister called me a hypocrite for taking the eucharist, and I realized she was absolutely right.

Anyways, the point of this is that I used to believe, and hard. I would pray a lot, sometimes consciously; more often I was just hoping really hard for some help. At the time, I thought it was god that would do it, because I was a special child of his and he loved me. 'Help me Jesus, I can't be pregnant.' Or 'Oh God, please let me get into the Air Force Academy.' I remember praying really hard while I was in basic training for help and guidance. The one thing to my credit at the time (when I was struggling with a back injury) was to draw the line when my mother suggested that I have the chaplain anoint my back with holy oils. That seemed like plain old hokum to me even in those days.

What I realize now is that I wasn't looking for help from on high, but just help from someone. I know now that I could have gone to my mother and asked for her to take me to the doctor to get birth control, or I could have taken an even simpler route and driven my car down to the local Planned Parenthood. Not only did I need help in getting into the AFA, but I got help getting in from all of my friends and family. Everyone was totally supportive of me, and I was just venting my worry in a way that was familiar to me.

I did a seminar a couple years back called Insight. Some people find it to be very spiritual, where as I found it to be very self empowering. There's an idea at the seminar to 'put things in the light.' To those that find the seminar to be related to some sort of faith or spirituality, this can mean praying to a specific diety, or putting your vibes out into the Universe as a whole. To me this idea is to simply let people (most particularly YOURSELF) know that you need help. Or that you need anything for that matter. Simply put, if you let those people that care about you know that you need help, they're going to try to help you. And not because god told them to.

On to the point:

Occasionally it happens now that I relapse. Recently it's happened because I have a job interview coming up and it's not just that I want the job (I do, very badly), but I need the job, because my other job isn't going so well. I've found myself at least once since my first contact from the company silently asking someone for help. 'Please,' I might say to the stifling hot air of my car after a long day at my current position that I loathe, 'Please, I really need this job.' I'm ashamed to admit that I have once said 'Oh god, I need this fucking job.'

Now, my use of the word 'god' is a knee jerk reflex used in many situations, and simply because of 18 years of habit that my 2 in spiritual uncertainty and my 20 somethings in solid, staunch atheism haven't been able to break me of yet. Some examples include:

God damn it, I stubbed my fucking toe.

Jesus Christ, that's an ugly car.

God you're dumb.

And of course, most importantly:

Oh god, that feels sooooooo gooooooooooooood.

However, when the words 'Oh god, I need this fucking job,' escaped my mouth, I was instantly appalled. Did I just pray? To a god I know doesn't exist?

The true answer: No. Of course not. 'Oh god,' is a phrase that I use probably 20 or more times a day. Mostly in the ordinary ways: 'Oh god, I don't want to go to my fucking lame ass job.' 'Oh god, 5 more hours in the fucking cubicle.' 'Oh god, someone kill me right now.' If I'm lucky, a couple of the usages will be accompanied by heavy breathing and sweaty bodies.

The truth is I was doing what I know everyone does. Proclaiming the need for help, or simply expressing their worries aloud. I know there's no god that's going to help me get a new job. It depends only on me, my skills, and my ability to not fuck up an interview. What I can do however, is let the people around me know that I'm worried and get their support.

In the end, I actually find it comforting to understand all of this about myself. Like I said, it's empowering to know that I control my destiny.

Seperation of Church and Everything Part 1: Education

Following in my line of 'Get your Christianity out of my face' posts, I'd like to start a series of posts. Some of my other posts probably belong in this series, but I'm too lazy to go back and re title/incorporate them.

I currently work for a large, private university (can you guess which one?) and as an employee here, I get to take classes for free, either at a physical campus or online. So, I recently started a new online class here that, as far as I can tell, is a secular subject: Programming. Unless I'm trying to create an army of atheistic robots, I fail to see how religion relates to algorithms and do-loops.

So the first assignment in each class is to post a short autobiography. It's basically an online version of standing up in front of a class and introducing yourself. But with the freedom of typing out pretty much as much about yourself as you want to, I feel that sometimes people go too far and tell me more than I really give a crap about.

The professors start this whole process off by posting a blurb about themselves. I started reading my professor's post on Tuesday with growing interest. The man is the same type of learner I am, spreading out his Master's degree over 10 years (my two bachelor's degrees took me 8, and I'm 'working on' a third for as long as I'm employed) and he seems like a really interesting dude.

Then it all falls down. Here starts a new paragraph to begin talking about hobbies, and mentions that "My faith is everything to me." With a large sigh and a shake of my head, I read through the rest of the biography. My thoughts at this point in time were clear: The last thing I need to know about my professor is their religious affiliation.

It's not that his faith is going to cause me to not like the man any more or less than I would have already. Like everyone, I have friends of multiple religious bents. However, there's something about announcing his religious affiliation in a classroom setting that rubs me the wrong way.

I'm not sure exactly which one of my sensibilities is offended in this case. In general, I don't think that religion has a place in a classroom. Of course, the exception to the rule would be a class dealing with a religion as a subject (Hell, even I've taken a course called 'Religion and the State'). In another way though, I could be upset because it seems like he's acting the way most Americans do and is assuming that everyone in the class is a christian. His whole statement was this:
"My faith is everything to me, and I am very active in a wonderful church family here in Tulsa and with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. My wife and I also volunteer for a wonderful ministry to young women in crisis called Crisis Pregnancy Outreach of Oklahoma."

So supposedly, to him, faith is synonymous with christianity. At least, that's the way it seems to me.

From a third aspect, I think I'm offended because if I were to mention being an atheist, and my atheistic ministering (I don't think I really have any of this, unless this blog counts) and my love of Darwin, I'd be willing to put good money down on someone calling me out on it as inappropriate. If there were equality, and I was protected in the same ways as my christian professor, I don't think this issue would bother me. It's the double standard that's associated with religion and the lack there off that gets under my skin the most. Announcing your Christian faith is viewed as a virtue, letting the rest of us know that you're a moral, upstanding citizen. My announcement of my Atheism means that I'm outing myself as one of the most distrusted people in America.

Music for Atheists

First I'll explain the title. I recently downloaded a fantastic album called Music for Spaceports by an artist called MrVoletron. Along with a number of highly amusing techno songs using voice clips from World of Warcraft, it seems that MrVoletron also plays Eve Online, and wanted to create his own music for spaceports. It's a wonderful album of ambient music, and for $5 and the chance to support an independent artist so he can keep amusing me with Warcraft Remixes (Still waiting for that Bonestorm remix, sir), I couldn't resist.


At any rate, this post is aimed at the presence of various deities in music, and the cynicism or lack there of that comes with it.



I actively listen to music (not just having it on in the background while I play nerdy video games) a lot more than I've done in recent years now that I have a full time job. In the midst of morning traffic (approximately 15 minutes) and afternoon traffic (approximately 30 minutes thanks to the assholes at city planning blocking up my main avenue of travel from now until JULY!), and my lunch hour usually spent at my desk not answering calls and reading various online blogs or browsing craigslist. During two, and sometimes all three, of these daily activities, I have my IPod out and music a-going. In the morning on the way to work, I usually listen to the morning show on the local rock station. The Morning Sickness is actually a fairly amusing show, even if the main dude is infuriatingly chauvinistic sometimes. However, sometimes on my way to work, and always on my lunch break and my way home, I'm looking to listen to good, hard music to help me work out the frustrations of my day. And I have a new recent favorite.



Maynard, the musical genius behind Tool and A Perfect Circle, has a lesser known side project called Puscifer (get it?). Though I don't worship every song Puscifer has put out, most of which are on my IPod, there are several that I do, in fact, absolutely adore.



So, you might be asking yourself, What does this have to do with Atheism? Well, here it is. There are several songs that I enjoy, not necessarily by Maynard (there are many others) that either make negative references to christianity or other sorts of references that are so much negative as they are unsavory.


The most blatant example of these is Judith by A Perfect Circle. With a line like "Fuck your God, your Lord, your Christ," it's pretty obvious why. However the song that really put this blog post in mind is a song by Puscifer called Rev 22:20, which I absolutely adore. Not only is it one of the sexiest songs I've heard in a long time (Maynard's voice does special things to me), but it uses some of the best euphemisms (or perhaps it's just an innuendo, or maybe a double entendre) that I've ever heard. Namely, "I know Christ is coming, but so am I," and "Jesus is risen, and it's no surprise." Since the entire song is basically about sex, the meaning of these statements is clear. There's also the lovely aspect that the album cover of Don't Shoot the Messenger is a 'don't shoot me' type of illustration of the stereotypical Jesus Christ.



Now I have no idea what religion Maynard attaches himself to, if he even does, but as an atheist, these lyrics elicit a grin every time I hear them.


What this all boils down to is an insecurity I'm having about my integrity. There is a part of me that feels that I should be above finding a sort of cynical enjoyment that I get from hearing these songs; and then there's the part of me that gets the enjoyment. I usually go through life in a self assured air of maturity, but with these songs, I feel like, if only for 4 minutes and 42 seconds, I'm not the mature Atheist I thought myself to be.

Zombie Jesus Meets Zombie Lion

So yes, it's been forever since I posted last. Life has been strange, as it must always be. Either way, onward to more important things:

Recently I was bored and wanted a movie to watch without the tedium of buying one, or waiting for one to download, or whatever other ways there are to watch movies. A couple friends at work have been talking up NetFlix to me over the last couple weeks, so I thought, What the hell, and signed up. And I've pretty much had a movie queued up on my computer since then. I've watched a couple of those movies that I'd always had an interest in seeing, but not so much that I would buy/rent/download it. Titles like Pan's Labyrinth, Being John Malkovich, and Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian to name a few. It's the last that got me thinking.

When I was a kid, the Narnia books were things that every kid supposedly read and loved. I guess I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, since I've been familiar with the story for as long as I can remember. But I wasn't much of a bookworm until I got into high school and Isaac Asimov books. So I never really read the other books; I'm not sure I was even aware that there were other books.

Back to the point, the Narnia books were just good stories back then. Not allegories, or anything technical like that. Hell, I didn't know what an allegory was until I was a Junior in high school. Now though, I've grown, matured, and had time to reflect. And what I find is that I'm horrified with the insidious, permeating influence of the Christian mythology into the lives of children. Similar to the scouts, as discussed in a previous post (see if you can find it among the plethora of posts!), children's literature is riddled with Christian allegories.

I was appalled last year when I downloaded the audio versions of the entire Narnia series and listened to it. I'd recently seen the first of the movies to come out; I'm sure it was well done, and sure, Liam Neeson has a great voice. But aside from that, it's just another way for Christianity to creep in at the edges and hide mythology behind cute lions and scary witches. Likewise, there are other reasons for my dislike in the story (C.S. Lewis' portrayal of a maturing female, for one), but this is about the forcing of religion on a child's mind.

I honestly feel violated. I'm not trying to be over dramatic here. A child's mind is a fragile, malleable thing, easily manipulated. Things like religion are concepts that are far too big to be grasped by such a young and vulnerable brain.

Yes, I know that religion has a an oral tradition which then turned into a written story telling. Hell, for the better part of human history, the oral tradition has been the main form of record keeping and handing down knowledge. However, I believe that we, as a species, have moved beyond the need to indoctrinate our children. Primal forces, which were once coped with by both children and adults, are now understood. The sky god will not hurl lightening bolts at you if you don't make a sacrifice to him. Yet his legacy, a.k.a. God, still grips the hearts and minds of men.

Well, now, this has turned into quite a stream of consciousness rambling, but here's the main point: Children's minds are vulnerable, and too be protected, rather than brainwashed by the incessant, insidious influence of the christian faith.