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.

Atheists, too, must sneeze

As mentioned in my last and most recent post, I recently rejoined the ranks of the working, piloting my desk, computer, and phone to new heights of time wasting and getting paid to fold origami while I talk to various people on the phone..... Yes, I work in a cube. Yes, I have 5 other people in nearby cubes. There are various plants on desks, and an air conditioning system that works like crazy to make my days as freezingly cold as possible. (Yes, I know freezingly is not a real world...)Whether it be the people, the plants, or the ridiculous AC, I find myself sneezing at least 4 or 5 times a day at my desk.

Usually, I reach for a tissue right as I'm about to sneeze, and afterwards, much in the way you might pardon yourself if you'd just hacked and coughed for a few moments, I am in the habit of saying, "Excuse me."

Normally, I don't have an issue with this. My significant other and I lead a nice quiet life, and when one of us sneezes, we either don't say anything at all, or we say, "Excuse me."
Now, I find myself being bombarded by the blessings of their god not once, not twice, but by at least three times. There are three separate people who immediately shout out, "God bless you!" every time I sneeze. Even if it's twice, thrice, or even four times in a row, there's a man who will spout out the blessing for each individual sneeze.

Don't get me wrong here. I enjoy the company of my cube mates very much. I was indeed lucky to be placed on such a fine team at my new place of employment. I also understand that they are merely performing in a way that they believe to be polite.

It does, however, get me thinking every time it happens. Sneezing is a physical process, much like coughing. Both processes generally involve something foreign or out of place in your body, and your body is simply trying to correct the situation. However, if I were to stand next to you, cough a couple times, and not say, "Oh, my. Pardon me," I would be performing in a generally rude fashion. But if I sneeze! Ho, ho! Now you must not only forgive the fact that I've released several airborne particles into your general vicinity, but you feel the need to wish the blessings of your deity upon me?

All in all, the practice weirds me out more than it offends me. Yes, I still excuse myself, and I do thank my coworkers for their kind wishes. I understand that it's done with good intent. No, my soul is not trying to escape through my nose.

What does really get to me after days and weeks of being constantly 'blessed' is the all around pervasiveness of the Christian faith. Not only this, but the particular in-your-face pervasiveness of American Christians. If you sneeze in Germany or Italy, you're not blessed, but instead wished good health, a nod to the fact that the underlying cause of a sneeze is something bodily, and might mean the onset of exposure or the consumption, or perhaps even the common cold. In America, however, it seems that 'God' is in my face all the time. If you'll pardon my slang, he/she/it is all up in my grille. (I honestly couldn't resist that...) Spirituality is, in my humble opinion, something that should be personal, private, or at the very least, confined to gigantic super churches with your closest 500 friends. There is no need for your religion to affect my life, and vice versa, there is no reason my lack of religion should affect yours.

This is something I have never understood about the christian faith, even when I considered myself a part of that faith. Spirituality, even if you don't consider it to be something that should be kept private, there has to be a major portion of it that is private. (And if there isn't, then...... I'm a lot more terrified of Christians as I initially thought...) If I remember correctly from my christian tenure, most of it is centered around a concern for the eternal disposition of your soul. What I've never understood is this overwhelming need to be concerned, not only for your christian soul, but for my soul as well. Is your own soul not important enough to keep you occupied? Can you not be satisfied knowing that your own place in heaven is secure? Why does my place there need to be a concern of yours? If I understand the concept of heaven proper, if you wanted me there, there would be some manifestation of me there.

This is a complaint that I know can swing back the other way and hit me right in the ass. My biggest general human population complaint, which goes into full blown shouting road rage while driving the streets of Phoenix, AZ, is that everyone is so fucking concerned with their own lives and where they need to be that they endanger my life in the process. However, the one place in my life that I wish everyone would just concentrate on their own shit is religion. I'm not broadcasting my atheism or trying to convert the believers to nonbelievers so that our blood can flow through the streets and rivers. Please leave the fate of my eternal soul to my own doing.

And please stop blessing me for releasing my germs and spit into the air around your face.

The Lost Atheist

Once, during a long hot summer, I was unemployed, and in my lonely night hours, I decided to put my atheistic thoughts and feelings into a deep and meaningful blog, perhaps recording years of my experiences as a maturing free thinker... Then I got a job, and somehow completely lost track of the project. Instead, I found myself with new people to talk to, and to rant to, and to generally have long meaningful conversations with. And then, one sunny afternoon, I came home to find my significant other in front of the computer, excited to tell me about his new blog.

"Wait one second," I thought to myself, "I, too, have a blog. Whatever happened to that old thing?"

Lo! And behold! Here is was, waiting for me! With a comment! And followers?! Wow, I must be a huge disappointment to them. Terribly sorry, folks. I do intend to do better in the near future.

So, once more, the little, lost atheist is found again, so to be tucked safe and sound in wrapping text of indignity and self righteousness. I can't wait!

Silly atheist, camp is for Christians

I was doing some research yesterday while I trying to think of a clever name for this little experiment, and I found an interesting article. It seems Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, prominent atheist, and author has helped to set up a summer camp designed for atheistic or free thinking children.

This is, by far, one of the most amazing things I've heard of in a good long while. I grew up as a catholic and went to Girl Scout camp as a young girl. Of course, as a young child, I hadn't yet developed to the point of questioning the things my parents and community taught me, and so, I had no problem at the time with going to a christian camp. Indeed, I loved it. We rode horses, did crafts, sang songs. Thinking back on it, it was mostly the songs that showed that the camp had any christian basis. Sure, we prayed before meals, but rituals like that often lose their meaning for an excited young girl at camp. The songs, however, are what I remember containing the most christian influence. The singing started on the bus, on the trip to camp. I don't know what Girl Scout camp is like in other parts of the nation, but where I grew up, it involved a long bus ride into the mountains. The entirety of the trip was spent singing various song, many of a christian nature, i.e., 'He's got the whole world in His hands'.

I'd never really thought about camp as having a religious undertone. Really, I'd never really thought about the religious undertone of a lot of things... I'm sure to expound on that subject quite a bit throughout this experiment. This religious undertone seems innocent enough on it's own, but when it's compiled with the rest of life in a christian majority, it seems like a kind of brainwashing. That is a topic big enough for it's own post however... perhaps tomorrow.

Reading about this new kind of free thinker's camp engenders a certain amount of jealousy in me. I'm very much a big kid at heart. I still play video games, put together legos and puzzles, watch cartoons, etc. The idea of going to summer camp for atheists makes me a little giddy. Of course, 20-somethings aren't allowed at camps, but besides that, it's full.

There is one item in the article that is a bit of an indignity. It is nothing to do with the camp itself, but, inevitably, the christian response to such a camp.

"We would defend the right for anyone to set up an event like this, as long as the young people are happy to attend, but in his imitation of the type of youth events that religious groups have been running for years, Dawkins makes atheism look even more like the thing he is rallying against."

Well, fuck. The christians don't want us atheists to let our children get together in the wilderness and go hiking, and barbecue over campfires, and do arts and crafts. Why? Because they did it first. Perhaps we shouldn't break bread together either, or get together on Sundays? Perhaps the christans should be doing those things either, since there were people doing them long before they came around. I'm fairly sure camping was a secular activity before christians started running summer camps.

I have a different opinion on the nature of these atheistic activities though. I have no children of my own, but I do have several nephews and a niece, a couple of whom are being brought up by my sister and her husband, both of whom are atheists also. I can imagine what might happen in a few years, when my niece wants to know why she can't go to summer camp like her friends who are in the Scouts. Who knows, perhaps my niece might be independent enough to handle being around a group of girls singing songs about what she doesn't believe in without being uncomfortable. But we all know how mean kids can be, hell, how mean people of all ages can be. They're mean enough about things like looks and accents (which my niece will have) and many more inconsequential things. Maybe my sister won't want her daughter ridiculed and teased.

Of course, a counter to this might be that my sister, or any atheist for that matter might not want their children exposed to a christian summer camp for the sheer fact that it is christian. But, when realizing that children are exposed to christianity so blatantly on a daily basis, why would one more week out of the summer matter. Think about it. I'm sure I'll expand on this more later.

Likewise, in note to my comment about brainwashing above: I hardly think that an atheistic summer camp falls under the same category. While christian camps teach that God exists, this new atheist summer camp teaches children to decide for themselves. Perhaps you might think that it is possible to 'brainwash' someone into thinking for themselves, but there is an inherent contradiction in that. Brainwashing involves some sort of indoctrination, re-education them to a certain set of beliefs. Free-thinkers, however, get to decide for themselves what they want to believe.

In the mindset of the majority, it is easy to wonder why other group set up activities and events so similar to their own. If they're not part of your majority, why do they want to imitate it? Perhaps it is so their own children can go to camp just like the christian kids. Perhaps it's not that those activities are things that just the christians like to do, but things that every group of people likes to do, like getting together and breaking bread, or sharing their ideas, or toasting marshmallows on sticks.