Ray Comfort & The Experience (Featuring Glenn Beck)

I recently listened to The No God Cast Podcast where they had on Ray Comfort.  At first I wasn't able to get through the podcast and had to turn it off.  The reason is that I have spent so much time working on recognizing fallacies and bad logic that I couldn't take listening to Ray's poor use of reasoning. I have already been through and dismissed anything he argues and just found it to be a waist of my time to listen to all of it again.  It wasn't until I was on a road trip where I had nothing to do that I decided to listen to the whole thing.

The part I found interesting was his conversion story. You can hear the specific podcast here. Basically he was 22 and had his own business, a great wife, and a kid.  He felt he had everything but started to fear death and looked into science and medicine and felt at a loss. This is when he found Jesus.  He was talking to someone about Jesus and had a powerful experience with the idea of Jesus taking on his sins. He repented that night and came to Jesus.  He said that the next morning the world looked different and he saw god in everything.  From then on he has found the bible to be the word of god and has many experiences with religion and Jesus that have lead him to where he is today.

I have no reason to doubt this experience. I don't doubt the power of it or the fact that his whole outlook on life changed after that day. I also don't doubt this conversion experience by Glenn Beck:

The interesting part starts around 2:30. Basically he was having a hard time with alcoholism, his career, his family, and life in general when he came to the Mormon church. He was looking for a religion and the Mormon one was the one he connected with.  His experience seems genuine to me and I have no reason to think he is acting. You can see it in his face and hear it in his voice, and I am moved by the emotion I see and hear. (It should be know that I hate Genn Beck. I hate what he promotes politically and the crazy he feeds into.) 

I see both of these experiences as genuine. It is the assumed outside source of god that I doubt. The pattern is simple: they are looking for something, find something that moves them, associate it to a religion or idea of god, and have a powerful connection afterward. Correct me if science says differently, but the power of the experience fuses the idea of the religion and Jesus (or Mohammed, Buddha,...) in association with the experience. So when you think of the religion or Jesus, you get the emotions of the experience, and when you have similar experiences, you think of Jesus or the religion. The brain primes ideas that are associated with other ideas and experiences. The more powerful the experience, the more powerful the association. 

The fact that they have had these moments does not excuse the pollution that they put into our society.  The nonsense they fight for, politically and socially, is awful. They get in the way of what is taught in schools, what science is accepted in society, the rights of women, and moving forward as a society. They both base all of these things on these experiences and further experiences they have had.  They ignore reality in order to fit the world into their little religious minds and then spread that poison with the assumption of their correctness and the thought that god has their back in endorses their ideas.  We atheists must continue to correct and argue with these ideas that are based on incorrect assumptions about real experiences. 

Their experiences are also contradictory. I wouldn't be surprised if Ray would consider the Mormon church to not even be Christian. Glenn would argue that Ray would have to accept the Mormon idea of god and be baptized and married in the Mormon temple in order to get the the highest level of the kingdom of heaven.  It would be a strange god to inspire them both to promote their faith in order to draw people from each other's faith to their own.  These experiences are not unique to these two and can be found in every religion and spiritual following. A few minutes looking for these experiences on the internet can show just how many there are.

The point is that we as humans are capable of experiences that are powerful. These experiences can even be had when discussing false ideas or nonsense. They are human experiences that are had while interacting with others or alone while thinking or in a meditative state.  They don't tell us about the outside world or anything supernatural, but they do tell us about our brains and what it is to be human.  Atheists are capable of having equally powerful experiences and often do.  I myself have had many of these experiences and many have been after becoming an atheist. During these experiences people can often be manipulated into believing in nonsense and we atheists have to keep our reasoning in check.  This can have a dampening effect on the experiences, but may be something we chose to do because we choose to be grounded in reality and refuse to be taken advantage of. My goal is to find powerful and "spiritual" experiences that keep me grounded in reality and add meaning to my existence. 

Testimony of City Creek

The Mormon church recently built a luxury mall in downtown Salt Lake City.  It includes high-end apartments and condos above the shopping center. The church funded it and owns the land so much of the profits get routed back into the church tax free.  Recently on twitter I jokingly testified to the truthfulness to the mall in a parody of a Mormon testimony. They feel the church leaders are called of god and will justify anything they do.  Here is the series of tweets put together in one testimony:

I know City Creek® is true!

I know that the majority of profits should be sent out of state to corporations that thou hast already blessed abundantly.

I know that housing for the affluent should be the only option.

I know that the jobs that have been brought must be low paying and add to the disappearance of the middle class.

I know that local businesses must be destroyed by thy power. In the name of USD amen.

More On The Religious Trap

I was thinking about my last post and I would like to expand on what I touched on in the last part. If you haven't read it, you can read it here.

This is a subject that I find a lot of atheists don't understand.  Even some of the greatest minds in the atheist community often over-simplify or just look past why people are religious. I think if we give credit to their emotions and approach it with compassion and empathy we will be more effective in pointing out the objective reasoning we use. 

Of course, one of the things I love and appreciate about the atheist community is that there are no leaders and there is no dogma.  We all approach the world with our objective reasoning and through that debate we reach conclusions. Each of us has different areas of knowledge and different strengths and weaknesses. My point is that different approaches can work better or worse depending on the situation. Sometimes people will respond to something more abrasive or humorous then they will respond to an empathetic approach since they may confuse empathy for justification.  My goal of this post is to add my approach to the table using my experience as a genuine believer turned atheist. 

It seems to me that the main problem is one of communication. What we say isn't what a theist hears and what a theist says isn't what an atheist hears.  And even if we actually hear what they say, it is a matter of what you value that determines where you land on. I will use the story from my last post to better explain what it is that I am trying to say.

So when I had that simple but great experience on the mission, I assumed that it had been orchestrated from god. It seemed to make sense that god would inspire something to come my way in order to teach me and so that I could have a positive impact on someones life.  The thing is that this wan't an isolated incident. This kind of thing happened all the time before during and after the mission.  The fact is that things can and do work out, people often respond positively to a situation, and things can very easily feel serendipitous. It is comforting and hits a real need to think there is a heavenly parent out there that loves you and is taking care of you. The need to feel special, loved and to know you matter is pretty much universal. This is the basis for why people are religious (along with fear and the various aspects of our social needs). Obviously from an atheist's perspective, they are (and I was) just seeing what they want to see.  They are seeing randomness and cause and effect and applying a thinking and controlling deity to the situation. When people say "the evidence for god is in everything" we are seeing that this is only evidence that someone can see god in everything if they want, and nothing more. 

The thing I think atheists tend to miss is that someone who has an experience like this, is actually learning something about the human experience. They are learning about how to be a better person or a better father/mother, teacher, worker, etc... They are having powerful moments that they use to guide their lives.  The moments are real, the lessons are real, but the assumption that they come from god is not. This is where the problem comes in. When we say "Your church isn't true. There is no evidence and we should dismiss it and the idea of god" they hear "Those experiences you had didn't happen and if they did, they didn't matter because there was nobody watching out for you and caring for you"  Can you see why it is so easy to accept nonsense? They are basing the value of their existence on these experiences that they assume is communicating the truth to them. This is why the theists have such intense cognitive dissonance. This is also why they can be so stubborn to see reality. This is also why they view atheists lives as meaningless. They think these experience are exclusive to god and don't realize that we can have them too, the only difference is that we don't mix in the supernatural. We see it for what it is. If you can understand what they are hearing you can take that into account and better communicate.  It also helps to understand what they are trying to say.

Pay attention to what they are really saying when arguing about god. Going back to my story, it would be like if you told my there was not god.  I would think "but god inspired the mission president to tell a story so I could use it to have this great experience. So there is a god"  but I would say something like "I know there is a god" or "I have experience that there is a god". When you would point out the logical fallacies, I would feel cognitive dissonance but then go back to what I felt and have to assume that you just where seeing it wrong or that there was some explanation that you are missing.  Also, when they say something like "Jesus is my friend" or "I love Jesus" they are really saying "Those experiences are my friend" or "I love those experiences" and they are calling the experiences Jesus because they assume they came from him. 

If we are actually understanding each other, it often comes down to the atheist saying "I understand your experiences, but: logic." and the theist saying "I understand your logic, but: experiences." We value the logic and use it to explain the experiences and they value the experiences and use it to ignore or be selective about the logic. I think where we as atheists can improve is that we tend to use logic to invalidate the experiences. We need to understand that they are real and have an explanation (not god). We need to know that they have value in our lives and that we can use logic and science to understand them,.  Just don't be too quick to dismiss them. I think of the quote from Sam Harris "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" (Can be seen here).  I think that validating the experience can be a way that we can break down the barrier a little and we may be able to surgically remove the supernatural part while allowing them to still connect with those moments. It may be that it has to be destroyed down to have to be rebuilt, but there may be some other way.  

For me, it took being completely destroyed emotionally and a complete rejection of the past only to work my way back here. It was painful and lead to a suicide attempt.  As science and the internet keep invalidating religions and religious thought, there need to be people and places people can turn to as resources in rebuilding their lives. I hope to be one of those resources. If you read this and like it, please let me know. I could use the encouragement and support to keep blogging. I have to dive into some hard stuff as I continue and would like to know it is making a difference. 

Wisdom in religion and why it is hard to see past it.

First off I would like to establish that I am about as much an atheist as you can be.  I have been through the reasoning and find that we have rather soundly reasoned away the idea of a god and the existence of a spirit. This effectively destroys any religion's authority and allows people to dismiss any access to a god or spiritual connection. So I only view religions as social organizations that are filled with nonsense and ideas on how to act, and they confuse emotions being triggered as spiritual experiences.  For an incredibly concise and damn near perfect argument against religion, I recommend What Are You Without God?: How to Discredit Religious Thought and Rebuild Your Identity by Christopher Krzeminski 

This brings me to the point of this blog. Although I see religions only as man made organizations that should be replaced with reasoning and that are built upon the foundation of people believing bullshit, I see that they often touch on some profound truths of human interaction and self realization. Religions are filled with stories of people who thought outside the box on things like forgiveness, self-improvement, and how to treat your enemies. They mix it in with mythology and the claim that it can only come from a supernatural source, and then demand loyalty and money. I will share a story from my mission to better explain myself.

I want to make my stories accessible to everyone and not just people familiar with Mormon terminology and organization, so a little explanation of a Mormon mission first. In the mission you are assigned a companion (the totally not gay sounding term they use) who is with you 24-7 unless you are in the bathroom.  You sleep in the same room but different beds.  They are afraid of missionaries having sex, drinking, or doing something else (this happens on occasion because the missionaries are in their early twenties). The idea of a companion is to have you watch over each other and keep each other in line. They also assign you to a certain area that you preach and live in.  Every 1 1/2 months new missionaries come into the mission and old ones leave and they rotate the missionaries as needed.  You often have two companions per area and then change to a different area.  You usually are with a companion from 1 1/2 months to 3 months and an area from 3 months to 6. Your first companion is called your trainer and has had a lot of experience in the mission. Missions last 2 years so he would usually be almost about to go home.

I had been in Venezuela for 3 months and was still rather new to the country and language. I had spent the first 3 months in one city called Barinitas and had 2 companions who were both American. At this point I was sent to a rather large city called Barquisimeto and placed with a Venezuelan companion that didn't speak English. Often you will live with another companionship, so there will be 4 in an apartment, but it was just the 2 of us in a 24th floor apartment in the heart of the city.  This was quite a change from a house in the small city of Barinitas. Barinitas was a beautiful city located on top of a mesa surrounded by jungle. I have fond memories of both the people and the cities themselves. 

Throughout the mission they have organizational and spiritual promoting meetings with other missionaries and, at times, with the mission president (he is a married adult who is responsible for the whole mission and you are supposed to obey any rules he gives you). During one of these meetings the mission president shared a story about Joseph Smith (the founder of the Mormon religion). The church often dilutes stories down to these happy little storybook lessons that always reflect the leaders as better then they were, but for all I know this one could have been based on exactly what happened. It doesn't matter for my point because, like I said, when you dismiss a soul and god you see religious stories as men adding the supernatural to anything that moves or scares them.

Anyway, I don't remember the details, but the president shared a story about how Joseph Smith had a fight with his wife about something and he went outside to cool off. He prayed and then went back inside and apologized and they made up. It definitely had more detail, but that is the general plot of the story.  Then the president asked "Did you see the point I am trying to make?" and I thought to myself that he was saying after fighting you calm down, invite the spirit, and make up. And then he said forcefully "You apologize!"  That surprised me. His point was that each person has a part in an argument and you find what you did wrong, no matter how small, and apologize for it. This was profound for a 19 year old boy who had never lived outside his home before. I really took it to heart.

A few weeks later, I was with my Venezuelan companion and we had just finished a meeting with the local church leaders in the city and were heading to get lunch when I brought up something about our schedule that day and he snapped at me. He told me about how we already discussed this with the leaders and I realized that he thought I was talking about something else and that he misunderstood me. When I tried to explain, he yelled at me and looked like he was about to hit me.  I was startled and we continued home in silence. After we got to the apartment I was annoyed and rather angry and that is when the words of the mission president came to my mind, "You apologize!". I thought to myself, "What could I possibly apologize for? He misunderstood me and was a jerk." I took a second to calm down and I prayed for help (this is the old religious me. I now think prayer does nothing more then allow self reflection and analysis). I started to think about how I didn't speak Spanish very well and I may have just not explained myself well. It was the only thing I could think of so I gave it a try. I walked up to him and told him I was sorry for not explaining myself well and that it was probably the Spanish barrier and then I let him know what it is that I was actually talking about.  At this point he softened up and started to cry. He told me that he was having a hard day and the pressures of the mission where wearing at him. He apologized and gave me a hug.  It was a really emotional and profound moment for me.

This is my point. It is so easy to have these moments (they are being had by church members around the world) and assume that there was a supernatural force behind them. I felt that the president was inspired by god to teach me that and that god lead me to say and do those things. It was touching and beautiful and helped me grow up and understand the world a little more. It was so easy to feel that this was something orchestrated by a loving god to make me a better person. The experience happened, but the supernatural aspect to it did not. As atheists, it is easy to forget that people are having moments like these. We see the logical problems with religion and are confused as to why they can't see past it. It is these moments combined with social pressure and fear that keep people trapped in a church. It is important that we remember that this is why people are so sensitive about religion. They feel we are telling them that these experiences didn't matter and that they were a waste.

There are amazing lessons to learn about this existence and it does matter because we experience it. The point is to be able to separate the supernatural aspect while taking in the experience. 

The Mission Part 1 of How Ever Many it Fucking Takes Me.

In the Mormon church a mission is hammered into every boy who grows up in the church.  You are expected to go. You are told you were put here in a Mormon family, by god, to go on a mission and bring the truth to people all over the world. 19 was the age for all young men to go and 21 was the age for women. The ages have changed to 18 for boys and 19 for girls. They encourage girls to get married instead of going on a mission, but make it optional for them.

They require each person who will go on a mission to be "worthy". This requires you to have one on one interviews with leaders and confess anything you have done.  You are required to have been consistently attending church and paying 10% of your income to the church. You need to have read the Book of Mormon and studied other church materials.  You have to confess any viewing of pornography or masturbation and it is required that you have restrained yourself from doing it at all for a set period of time. I think it is around 6 months. You have to confess any sexual things you have done with anyone else, and if you have done too much, you can't go. I may be wrong, but as I understand it, if you have had sex more than once then you are disqualified from going. You also have to have to follow the word of wisdom (no coffee, tea, alcohol, or drugs) and have to have repented for any breaking of it and are required to refrain for a certain period of time.

I was generally a good Mormon boy, so I hadn't broken the word of wisdom. I was a virgin and had only made out a couple of times and stayed at first base, so that wasn't an issue. Like pretty much every straight teen, I had looked at porn on the internet and I had discovered masturbation when I was like 8 so I had to confess that and refrain for a time. That was the most difficult for me, but I was determined to be worthy and I really did refrain and was honest with the leaders to go on a mission.

You also are required to go through the Mormon temple before you go on your mission. You have to pass the same worthiness interview for the temple. I will write an entire post on the temple. If you want to see the entire weird session here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VrsFEiTpsQ

So as you are getting ready, they give you some paperwork to fill out. You tell them whether or not you would go overseas and are willing to learn a new language, general information about yourself and you also include a picture of yourself.  After you fill out the packet and pass the worthiness interviews, you send it in and wait back to hear where you are going. I was pretty excited and it took about 3 weeks to get back to me. When I got it, I had all my family and friends over for me to open it. You have no idea where you are going until you get the letter and it is possible to go pretty much anywhere and learn any language. It tells you where and when you start. My mission was the Valencia, Venezuela mission. I reported to the training center on December 19, 2001.

Every missionary goes to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) before going on the mission. There are a few of them around the world, but the largest and main one is in Provo, UT. If you are going to learn a language, this is where you learn the basics. It is also where every missionary learns how to sell the church. Those who learn a new language go for 2 months and those who don't only are there for 2 weeks.  I was learning Spanish so I was there for 2 months.

Going on a mission is really fucked up. You are not allowed to watch movies, listen to non-church music, read non-church books, follow the news, like any girls, or communicate with your family outside of letter writing. The only phone calls you can make are on Christmas and Mother's Day (Fathers can fuck off). You give up every part of your identity and give your entire life to the church. You have a set schedule at the MTC and every minute of the day is accounted for. You are to get up and go to bed at a certain time, study church materials, go to classes, and eat meals. The biggest decisions you get to make is what you eat from the cafeteria (it is just the BYU cafeteria food) and what you do with your gym time. They control everything you do and think and you are basically brain washed there. The main difference from a crazy cult is that they don't deprive you of sleep. You go to bed right at 10:30 and get up at 6:30.

It is amazing how crazy this is to me now. At the time, I grew up with the idea of going and was told how it would be, so it wasn't weird. They teach you not to allow yourself to think about worldly stuff. So if you are thinking about a song you like or your family or anything from your life before, you are expected to stop it and start thinking about church stuff. I really tried to be sincere and it lead to a lot of repression and emotional problems for me. I would feel guilty for enjoying anything that wasn't part of the church and would push it down. This didn't go away after the mission and I have struggled for years trying to not punish myself for enjoying things. This is a dirty little secret for the church. Tons of missionaries are developing emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety, and it isn't discussed much. The way the church works it that it can't possibly be a problem with the system since it came for god, so the problem is with the missionary. So not only do they give you a disorder, but then they tell you it is your fault for not dedicating yourself properly. You must have done something wrong and the answer to fix it is to push yourself to do what they say in a more obedient and exact way.

I feel like this post is too long and boring so I am going to stop here. I will write more about the MTC and what it was like going to Venezuela in the next post.

The horror of praying about the Book of Mormon

I have decided to start writing my experience in the Mormon church and how I ended up leaving and becoming an atheist. I am not the best writer, but I hope this is of some interest to people and may even help those who might be thinking of leaving.

When I was 17 I finally read the Book of Mormon for the first time. Growing up, I found scripture reading to be very boring and would either do a very half-assed job of it or not do it at all. I would often feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to actually do it. This changed when I was 17 for two reasons. First, every Mormon is expected to read the whole book of Mormon and pray about it. They are told they will receive an answer for themselves so they can know the church is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet.  Seems simple enough. And second, I was going to go on a mission for the church at 19 and I felt the pressure of having to be ready to go.

Before I go on, let me explain the idea of a mission in the Mormon church. Every young man in the church was expected to go on a mission at 19 (it has now been changed to 18). I was told for as long as I could remember that god wanted me to go on a mission and that it was my special calling as part of the true church.  It was hammered into me over and over. I was generally a good kid who trusted my parents and church leaders and I just assumed the church to be true and that the mission was just part of my life. Along with college and getting married, the mission was just something you did to grow up.

So when I turned 17, I really started to feel like I should do my effort and gain more of a testimony about the church. I set out to read the book of Mormon and I really did try to do it sincerely. I would take notes of parts that I found inspirational and I would start again when I started to daydream as I read (this happened a lot). I would also pray every night for understanding and the ability to apply the teaching to my life.

The way missionaries sell the church to converts, and the way leaders sell the church to people growing up in the church, is to have them read the book of Mormon and have them pray about it. They quote a part of the book of Mormon that is at the end in Moroni 10:3: "Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts." The trick is that if you don't get an answer, the church is true anyways and you either did it wrong without enough faith, didn't understand the answer you did get, or you need to keep doing it until you get an answer. Heads, the church wins. Tails, you lose (the church wins).

So the night I finished reading the Book of Mormon I was excited. I fully expected something to happen. I knelt down, prayed, asked for a confirmation of the truthfulness, and waited. I felt nothing. I felt no outside source communicate anything to me. I suddenly saw myself as alone in my room and I felt alone. This terrified me. I stood up and paced back and forth in a panic. For a moment I was in an emotional free-fall and in complete terror.

Now here is the point where all the mind control and emotional manipulation came into play. There were lessons I had heard that were already there to prepare me for this situation. This same thing happens a lot so they tell of others that were confused and didn't receive an answer. They say they realized that their life was better and that the spirit was with them more as they read it and that the answer was already there and they had to see it.  I remembered these lessons and told myself that mine was one of those situations and I consoled myself. I knew I was lying to myself at the time, but I needed to calm down to a point so I could go to bed and deal with it in the morning. Dealing with it was burying down my real feelings and telling myself that I needed to just keep going. I didn't dare entertain the idea that the church wasn't true. I was told that people who left the church were terrible people who loved Satan and sin and were just bitter people. I assumed it had to be true and the problem was with me. I needed to give more to the church and dedicate myself more. I needed to go on a mission and have experiences that would affirm my testimony of the church so I could truly know. Until then I would fake my testimony and keep trying.

You might think that faking it is a weird thing to do, but it is actually officially preached as what your are supposed to do. They actually tell you that you should say you "know" before you do and that by saying it, you will make it true. I am not making this shit up.  This is really where I started the pattern of self abuse I was instructed to inflict upon myself. I was told, that if the church or spiritual feelings fall short, it was your fault and that just meant that you needed to do better. You needed to just pray more, do more things to invite the spirit, And ALWAYS pay 10% of your paycheck. This is the pattern that would haunt me on my mission and eventually lead to my suicide attempt. This is why I fucking hate the church.