DarthFishy
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2008
- Messages
- 1,393
I was inspired by Scott Jurgenson's thread about this girlfriend and her church to write this. The description he gave of her church sounded very much like the church I grew up in.
It was essentially a mega-church located in South Africa. My parents joined it when it was still a small student church and have been members ever since (admittedly they have lapsed a bit as regular attendees). It's important to understand in South Africa at that time we had the NG (Dutch Reformed) Church as the 'official' Church and if you were Afrikaans that's the church you went to. My parents being (ironically enough) open-minded about things like Apartheid and the generally stuffiness of the NG Church were interested in finding something different.
This was the church they eventually ended up in (names removed to protect the innocent/guilt/other). This church was highly successful, eventually moving out of the small church building into a massive 10 000 seater auditorium built on the grounds of an old drive-in theater.
The church consisted of various 'ministries' one of these which was a school. My mother having recently graduated with a teaching degree decided to join the school as a math and science teacher.
And this is where I fit in. For the next 12 years I would attend the school (on the church property) 5 days a week. Spend Friday evenings at Church for the Youth Group meetings and spend at least part of the Sunday at church for on of the two or three sermons that were held.
It was a pretty radical church too. Speaking in tongues (done that - check), prophecy (done that - check), laying on of hands (done that -check), slain in the spirit (done that - check). At least no snake handling! And I was enamored by all this, trying my best to be a good Christian boy. Went of church youth camps, sort of even became a youth leader. Became the equivalent of Head-Boy at my Christian School as well. Spent three years after school going to the churches student 'ministry'.
And yet here I stand at 28 years of age as an Atheist. Through all the subtle indoctrination, through all the years of continuous exposure, that seed of rationalism first and then agnosticism (the more popular definition) grew and grew. Eventually I couldn't live with the cognitive dissonance and I started throwing away the contradictory ideas one by one.
Firstly the idea that this church was the only church with the answers was thrown away. It became clear to me that the pastors and leaders in the church were just human and had about as much access to the 'truth' as I did according to the bible I was reading.
Secondly the idea that the Bible in and of itself was absolute truth also went. Issues of mistranslation and misinterpretation made it clear to me that it was impossible to verify the truth of any of this.
I ended up with some kind of vague spiritualism with a bunch of other friends from church who had been following the same kind of journey. (Lots of D&D and Starcraft kind of made me wonder about a lot of things). We were trying to fashion our own kind of philosophy based on what we knew and what we thought was true. Was a really fun time but we were pretty open to some Woo ideas like numerology and a whole bunch of "Quantum-Woo".
I was the initial skeptic in the group and would continually point out the flaws in logic to a lot of these ideas.
This interest in skepticism eventually lead me to Penn and Teller's ********, which lead me to Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy which lead me here.
After reading countless arguments of Believers vs. Atheists I found myself more and more comfortable with the idea that, yes indeed, I was an Atheist, and yes this position mad the most sense.
And here I am today, someone who had spent the first 22 years of their life steeped in a fundamental religious upbringing ended up quite Atheist and (hopefully) pretty rational.
I know it's a long rant but (a) it's good to get it off my chest and (b) there is hope. The Atheist position (philosophically) is not a militant one, it's not adamant and it's not in your face. It's patient, waiting to point out all the small inconsistencies, and then letting you try and resolve them. Until one day you realise there are no more to resolve, because you are a Christian (or other Religion) no longer!
My name is DarthFishy and I'm an Atheist!
(Actually Gnostic Atheist but that's an argument for another thread).
It was essentially a mega-church located in South Africa. My parents joined it when it was still a small student church and have been members ever since (admittedly they have lapsed a bit as regular attendees). It's important to understand in South Africa at that time we had the NG (Dutch Reformed) Church as the 'official' Church and if you were Afrikaans that's the church you went to. My parents being (ironically enough) open-minded about things like Apartheid and the generally stuffiness of the NG Church were interested in finding something different.
This was the church they eventually ended up in (names removed to protect the innocent/guilt/other). This church was highly successful, eventually moving out of the small church building into a massive 10 000 seater auditorium built on the grounds of an old drive-in theater.
The church consisted of various 'ministries' one of these which was a school. My mother having recently graduated with a teaching degree decided to join the school as a math and science teacher.
And this is where I fit in. For the next 12 years I would attend the school (on the church property) 5 days a week. Spend Friday evenings at Church for the Youth Group meetings and spend at least part of the Sunday at church for on of the two or three sermons that were held.
It was a pretty radical church too. Speaking in tongues (done that - check), prophecy (done that - check), laying on of hands (done that -check), slain in the spirit (done that - check). At least no snake handling! And I was enamored by all this, trying my best to be a good Christian boy. Went of church youth camps, sort of even became a youth leader. Became the equivalent of Head-Boy at my Christian School as well. Spent three years after school going to the churches student 'ministry'.
And yet here I stand at 28 years of age as an Atheist. Through all the subtle indoctrination, through all the years of continuous exposure, that seed of rationalism first and then agnosticism (the more popular definition) grew and grew. Eventually I couldn't live with the cognitive dissonance and I started throwing away the contradictory ideas one by one.
Firstly the idea that this church was the only church with the answers was thrown away. It became clear to me that the pastors and leaders in the church were just human and had about as much access to the 'truth' as I did according to the bible I was reading.
Secondly the idea that the Bible in and of itself was absolute truth also went. Issues of mistranslation and misinterpretation made it clear to me that it was impossible to verify the truth of any of this.
I ended up with some kind of vague spiritualism with a bunch of other friends from church who had been following the same kind of journey. (Lots of D&D and Starcraft kind of made me wonder about a lot of things). We were trying to fashion our own kind of philosophy based on what we knew and what we thought was true. Was a really fun time but we were pretty open to some Woo ideas like numerology and a whole bunch of "Quantum-Woo".
I was the initial skeptic in the group and would continually point out the flaws in logic to a lot of these ideas.
This interest in skepticism eventually lead me to Penn and Teller's ********, which lead me to Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy which lead me here.
After reading countless arguments of Believers vs. Atheists I found myself more and more comfortable with the idea that, yes indeed, I was an Atheist, and yes this position mad the most sense.
And here I am today, someone who had spent the first 22 years of their life steeped in a fundamental religious upbringing ended up quite Atheist and (hopefully) pretty rational.
I know it's a long rant but (a) it's good to get it off my chest and (b) there is hope. The Atheist position (philosophically) is not a militant one, it's not adamant and it's not in your face. It's patient, waiting to point out all the small inconsistencies, and then letting you try and resolve them. Until one day you realise there are no more to resolve, because you are a Christian (or other Religion) no longer!
My name is DarthFishy and I'm an Atheist!
(Actually Gnostic Atheist but that's an argument for another thread).
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I'm not really sure how to respond to it though. 
