Browsing Archives for January 2010

Because it has been a little rough lately.
 

 

 

 

 

Our family visited England this summer.

I have written about many parts of the trip, but I have been saving this tea party story for the day after I eviscerated my former faith, ‘came out’ as an atheist and left my conventional life as a churchy small town doctor’s wife in a heap of  smoking ruins behind me.  

Because a nice cup of tea makes everything more tolerable.  

Doesn’t it?

 

 

 

 

The last leg of our trip was spent with our friends Mike and Liz and their three sons.  Mike and Liz have been good friends of ours since my husband was in medical school.  My friend Liz grew up in a small town outside of London.  She met her husband Mike in Germany and they eventually moved back to the States.

 

 

 

 

 

Liz’s mum threw us a gorgeous tea party.  Check out the cool postcard wall in her kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Liz.

 

 

This is the house that Liz grew up in. 
The house has a name because that’s what they do in England. They give houses names.

 

 

The spread.

 

 

 

 

The serve.

 

 

 

 

 

The mother daughter series…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The man in gray on gray with just a touch of gray is Liz’s husband, Mike.

My husband’s name is also Mike and believe it or not the two Mikes share the same birthday.  

I know….

Scary!

 

 

 

My boys all drink tea.  

Because I make them drink it.  

Because I think tea is a civilizing agent and very necessary for a house full of young boys.  

When my boys have friends over, they drink tea with us too.  We all sit around with our cups and saucers and drink tea and speak in fake british accents and say things like ‘jolly good’ and ‘old mate’ and ‘limes and kippers’ even though I have no idea what ‘limes and kippers’ means.  We just say it because it sounds British and it is loads of fun.

 

Liz’s mom was very surprised and delighted that my boys wanted a cup of tea too.

When we said ‘limes and kippers’ in our fake cockney accents, she just smiled politely and then excused herself to go make some more tea.

 

 

Liz’s son Sam grabbed my camera and took a few excellent shots.  He really has an eye.

 

 

 

That’s me beside Liz’s mum.  What are we talking about?  We seem so intent.  Am I telling her that I am an atheist?  Am I trying to explain the whole ‘limes and kippers’ thing?

 

 

 

 

Liz and Will

Sam took this shot.

 

 

 

 

Liz’s dad and my extraordinarily good looking husband (the one on the left).  

 

 

 

 

Later that evening, we went to a nearby pub that was on a river, except I don’t think they are called rivers.  They are man made channels or canals or something and they have them all over England.  The country is practically pockmarked with them.  It is a popular past time to take a very narrow boat down these canals and see the countryside. 

 

 

 

 

This pub was located adjacent to a ‘lock’.  Am I getting this terminology even remotely right?  

 

 

 

The boys got to help close off the ‘lock?’ and then they waited for the water to rise inside the ‘lock?’  and then they opened up the ‘lock?’ on the other side.

How was that for a fascinating explanation of something so crushingly obvious? 

 

Cheerio (in fake cockney accent).

Evidently bovine spongiform encephalopathy is basically the same thing as cannibal palsy… which is the same thing as kuru… which is the same thing as mad cow disease. So cannibal palsy is mad cow!   Cows get it from eating other cows and humans get it from eating other humans. So I guess the question is, can a human get mad cow?  It seems unlikely as this is cannibal palsy we are talking about and I don’t think that human consumption of cows equates cannibalism, and yet I seem to distinctly remember a terror that swept our country not all that long ago where even I may have passed up a few hamburgers here and there. I better google it…

Okay – the way a person can get mad cow is by eating a cow who had mad cow.  So avoid that… and avoid eating the brains of your dead relatives and avoid eating anything that even looks like a prion.  Prions are the problem and they can show up in deer, elk, sheep, cows and humans.  So if you really want to be safe, avoid eating pretty much all meat except bacon.  

Thanks Norm!

Thanks to reader Sandy for emailing me with some fascinating information regarding cannibal palsy. Evidently it is real. It does happen. And the best way to avoid it is to NOT eat the brains of your dead relatives. So if you were planning to eat the brains of your dead relatives, PLEASE DON’T!  For more information on what other steps you can take to avoid cannibal palsy or as the educated elites like to call it ‘kuru’ click here. Thanks Sandy!

In other news…

I continue to live in fear and anxiety over emails but thanks for sending them anyway. The only ones I will open for now are the ones clearly marked ‘cannibal palsy’ and possibly emails that contain photos of very sexy, scantily clad, standard poodles.  As you can see, now that I am an atheist all my morals are completely shot to hell.  For instance, I no longer think that it is okay for god to ask Abraham to sacrifice his child, Isaac to prove his faith.  I know!  I know!  All this time… all these years…  I thought it was perfectly okay for god to ask a person to murder their child to prove their faith, but now that I am an atheist and have no morals, I think that this request is a clear indication that the god in the bible is a psychotic sociopath.  But wait!  It gets even worse!  For I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if god were to ask me to murder my own child to prove my faith my answer would be NO!  Or actually it would be HELL NO!  Or actually it would be far more potent than that, but I can’t write it here for the sake of the christian homeschoolers who might self-incinerate if they see the correct response in print to god’s request to murder your own child to prove your faith. If you would like to email me your own response to god asking you to murder your own child to prove your faith please label the email ‘god is a sociopath’.

And just to ensure that the hate mail continues…

Here are two Ricky Gervais videos that are a must watch for anyone who has ever asked the questions…

1.  Where exactly was god when the snake showed up in Eden?

2.  And why both the snake and the tree in Eden?

3.  Because isn’t that clearly just a recipe for disaster?”

Fortunately most of the homeschoolers won’t understand him as he doesn’t speak American.

And then there’s Jesus, the unpaid babysitter.

Me – Hey honey?

CD – What?

Me – Do people that eat too much human flesh develop a sort of palsy?

CD – What?

Me – You know…  do cannibals start to shake all the time because they eat other people?

CD – What are you talking about?

Me – In the movie The Book of Eli, the cannibals develop a shake because they eat too much human flesh.  Is that true?  Do you start to shake uncontrollably if you regularly eat human flesh?

CD – Well… I don’t know… Let’s see if I can remember…. In the last study that I read in the Journal of American Medicine where they fed five thousand humans on the flesh of five thousand other humans for six months…

My second son used to play on a basketball team that had a coach that constantly yelled, “Deny!  Deny!  Deny!”  I am not a sports fan, nor even remotely sports literate, however having four sons has made me at least understand the difference between defense and offense as well as which town’s concession stand serves the best nachos.  During the time that Ethan played on that team, I slowly came to understand that ‘Deny!  Deny!  Deny!’  had something to do with playing good defense and was not a forceful encouragement to get my child and his teammates to tell a string of vicious lies.

Over time, I have absorbed a few other words and phrases and sometimes I can actually figure out the vaguely correct time to yell them.  And so strangely, a few days ago, at a freezing cold gym in St. Mary’s Kansas, I found myself yelling towards a group of boys skirmishing underneath the basket, “Block Them Out!  Block Them Out!”

I kind of understand what ‘Block Them Out’ means – but no… not really.  I just know that there are certain times in the game when you yell ‘Block Them Out’ because I have heard other parents and a few coaches yell, “Block them out!”  I told my boys about what I yelled when I got home.

Me – I yelled ‘Block Them Out’ at the game tonight.

Son – You did?

Me – Yes.  I hope I yelled it at the right time.

Son – Were we on defense?

Me – Yes… I think so…

Son – Just try and make sure we are on defense when you yell it – okay?

Me – Okay…  Hey…when can I yell ‘Deny!  Deny!  Deny!’

Son – Never.

Me – Okay.  

 

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This weekend I went to my youngest son Jack’s game.  He is eight and plays in a local recreation league and even though I hardly know any of the rules in basketball, I can recognize ‘traveling’ when I see it as well as the cute rotating arm motion that the referee has to make to signal a traveling foul… or uh… a traveling mistake… or a traveling error… or whatever you call it.  On Jack’s team the kids pretty much ‘travel’ all over the place and it never gets called because if it did, the kids would never make it past the half court line.   In fact, there is so much ‘traveling’ going on, that I think even I could play on that team as running around with a basketball in your hands doesn’t seem to require too much cheetah like athleticism.  At Jack’s game I mostly just yell one thing, the ubiquitious basketball phrase – “Put your hands up!”  

“Put your hands up!”

“Put your hands up!”

“Put your hands up guys!”

“Get them up!”

“Get those hands up!”

“Get them up in the air boys!”

“C’MON JACK – GET YOUR HANDS UP!”

When you start thinking about some of these things you yell at a basketball game it starts to sound like something distinctly criminal is going on.

“Deny!  Deny! Deny!”

“Block Them Out!”

“Put Your Hands Up!  Up!  Get Them Up!”

“Steal it!  Steal it!  Steal the Ball!”

“Take it away!  TAKE IT AWAY!”

“Deny!  Deny!  Deny!”

“DENY! DENY! DENY!”

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Today, when I was driving Jack home from his game my eldest son made an announcement.  

Cal – “Mom – could you please not sit right behind the team at my game tomorrow?”

Me – What?

Cal – Could you PLEASE NOT SIT right behind the team at tomorrow’s game.

Me – Why?

Cal – Just don’t sit there!

Me – But why?  You have to give me a reason.  

Cal – Just don’t sit there.  

Me – But WHY?  Why can’t I sit there?

Cal – Just don’t!

Me – Can you give me a reason?

Cal – Because I just don’t want you to!

Me – But why?

Cal – I just don’t!

Me – I need a reason!

Cal – Just don’t sit there!

This conversations went on like this for longer than is remotely sane.  I got irritated pretty quickly.  If he could come up with a reason why I shouldn’t sit behind the team, I would consider it, but just being told not to sit there by my punkish fourteen year old is really not enough for me.  I started to wonder if it was just general ‘mom proximity’ or ‘mom cooties’ or ‘mom laser beams’ that was bothering him, which only served to further hack me off.  I am a very quiet at the games.  If I yell anything, it is usually just general encouragement or my latest phrase ‘Block Them Out’ which I only try if I feel super confident.  If my son is asking me to sit further away from the team because he is embarrassed by me, then he can just stick it.  I have zero intention of copping to that bit of silliness.  

Later that night, I told Mike about this conversation.  

Me – Calder doesn’t want me to sit behind him at the games.

CD – Uhuh.

Me – I got upset about it, because I think it is ridiculous for him to be embarrassed just because I am sitting behind the team.

CD – I don’t want to sit behind the team either.

Me – Why?

CD – Because, people who sit right behind the team are trying to second guess the coach and generally are attempting to influence the game.

Me – What?

CD – People who sit right behind the team are kind of like bullies.  They want to hear what the coach says, and they want to yell things to sort of attempt to have some control of the game.

Me – But I don’t do that!  I don’t even CARE about the game!

CD – I know that, but Calder probably thinks that you are making the coach paranoid.

Me – But I’m not!  I don’t even understand basketball.  I don’t even want to be there at all!  I wish all of my sons were deeply interested in ballet or tap dancing or live theater!  I don’t even like sports!

CD – I know.  But you are sitting in the spot reserved for the parent bullies.

Me – Why couldn’t Calder have told me that?

CD – It is kind of hard to explain it.

Me – That’s because it doesn’t make any sense.

CD – It doesn’t make any sense for you, but for other people, for sports people it does.  I’m with Calder on this one.  Don’t sit behind the team.

Me – Oh alright!  … So when can I yell “Deny!  Deny!  Deny!”

CD – Never.

1.  I apologize to all the homosexuals.  I am sorry that I believed in a religion that condemns you.  I am sorry that for many years I thought that the bible was right in it’s condemnation of homosexuality.  I am sorry that when I no longer thought the bible was right about homosexuality being a sin, I did not raise a gigantic stink about it every Sunday right in the middle of the sermon… week after week after week…  until the church issued a restraining order against me and I could no longer come within a hundred feet of the sanctuary.  

 

2.  I apologize to everyone on the face of the earth that has not accepted Jesus christ as their personal savior because I believed that you were all going to hell.  This includes Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, Environmentalists, Democrats, Movie Stars (especially Tom Cruise), Scientologists, University Professors, Physicists, Geneticists, Europeans, Women’s Studies Majors, Feminists, Millionaires, Billionaires, Hippies, Atheists, Agnostics, Astrologers, People who read their horoscopes, People who watch Bay Watch, Vegetarians, J.K Rowling, Bill Gates, All High-School Biology Teachers who teach evolution and P.E .Teachers who teach a yearly unit on sex-ed..

 

3.  I apologize to all my former Sunday school students because I taught you that the bible was the word of god.  I perpetuated a myth that the bible is a special book that should be regarded ‘much more highly than it ought’.  I encouraged you to trust this book, to think this book contained sacred ideas about life and god.  I made you think that the stories in the bible were intrinsically valuable and could teach you about how god works and who god is.  I apologize for always referring to god as a ‘he’, thereby further anthropomorphizing a pretend deity and making you think ‘he’ was real and decidedly masculine.  I apologize for teaching you to think that you were a sinner and that Jesus had to die for you when you are really just a beautiful child, perfect in every way from the minute you were born (except for when you aren’t).  I apologize for telling you that Jesus conquered death and that you should put your trust in him when there is not a shred of evidence of the resurrection except for what is in the bible.  I apologize for not respecting your intelligence and glazing over thorny issues and rationalizing all the bullshit that is so present at all times in ‘god’s word’.  (I apologize for saying bullshit in this apology).  I apologize for ever calling the bible ‘god’s word’.  It isn’t ‘god’s word’.  It’s just a book.  There are a lot of other much better books.  There are books that helped humanity move beyond misogyny and slavery and tyranny.  There are books that led to scientific discoveries which led to medicine and helpful machines and made the world a better place.  None of those books are in the bible.  In fact, the bible helps people to justify misogyny and tyranny and slavery and the bible made church leaders fear science and so they burned scientists and doctors and smart people because what those smart people were learning was often in direct conflict with what the bible and the church taught.   I apologize for not telling you that the bible and christianity are two of the main reasons that it took people so long to move from tyranny into democracy, from slavery to human rights, from cruel religious mandates to civil law.  I hope someday you will figure that out for yourselves in spite of what I taught you.

 

4.  I apologize for giving money to the church.  I apologize for helping to support and pay for a building that stands empty six days a week.  I apologize for giving my hard earned cash to pay an enormous utility bill on a mostly empty church building.  I wish I would have given all that money to alleviate real human suffering.  To purify drinking water, to build a third world hospital, to educate a child living in a slum, to improve an orphanage, to further research on diseases, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, heal the sick, reform the prisoners, but instead so much of my available funds have up until now, been sucked into a huge building that gets used once a week by wealthy over -fed Americans who get upset if the sanctuary is not adequately cooled in July.

 

5.  I apologize for believing all sorts of mad things that are seriously messed up and incredibly hurtful to my fellow humans.  Things like god causes the sins of the parents to punish the children and the grandchildren (which some christians use to explain birth defects).  Things like excusing the extra creepy stuff in the bible (slavery, misogyny, genocide) based on ‘historical context’ instead  of just insisting that it was wrong back then and it’s wrong now.  I apologize for things like teaching the stories of big bible heroes like Abraham and Jacob and not insisting that taking a slave for a wife was a hideous violation of human rights because having a slave and then raping a slave and then fathering children with a slave is no way for anyone to EVER behave even if you are a BIBLE BIGWIG.  I apologize for thinking it is okay for god to ask a person (Abraham) to murder their child to prove their faith and even thinking that if I really loved god, I too must be willing to murder my child if god asked me.  I apologize for things like thinking that I had ever done anything so terrible… so horrible.. so AWFUL  to warrant someone else to have to die on a cross for me.  (Hey!  I am far from perfect, but no one should have to be tortured and slowly murdered for my eternal salvation). 

 

6.  I apologize to my kids for being a passive aggressive christian mom.  For saying things to them like ‘”if you are lying to me, god knows.  He knows you are lying so you better not be lying because he knows.  God knows everything. Are you lying? Because if you are lying god can tell.  You can lie to your mom but you can’t lie to god.  God sees everything.  Are you lying?  You better not be lying to me because even if I don’t know – god knows” … etc etc etc…  

 

7.  Finally, I apologize for allowing my faith to numb my response to the problems of the world.  So when there was injustice, or crime, or pain, or hunger, or illness, or ignorance, or war, or greed, or tyranny, or slavery or abuse, or addiction, or pollution, or natural disasters –  I believed that god was taking care of it and I didn’t really have to do anything… (except pray).  Because it was god’s will… and god was using these bad things to teach me compassion… or patience… or that satan was ‘the ruler of this world’… or that we should forgive… or god was ‘perfecting’ us… or ‘disciplining’ us.  (Boy!  god sure disciplines the hell out of Africa doesn’t he?)  I was taught that all you have to do to get into ‘heaven’ is accept Jesus as your savior.  You can do good things if you want, but good deeds are not getting your ass into heaven.  So why would I bother helping out?  My ass was already saved!

 

For all these things I am truly sorry and I most humbly repent…

AND plan to make changes, repair damages and do the hokey pokey and turn myself around.  

So Be It,

Rechelle

As some of my readers may have noted, there has been an um….  philosophical shift in this blog.  To put it simply, I once was blind, but now I see.  Or to put it even more simply – god is imaginary.  Or to put it even more simply – I was a practicing christian in various shades, degrees and forms for the past 41 years and then within a span of a few weeks – I became an atheist.  

I can’t really point to one particular event that caused the last brick to fall out of the crumbling building that was my faith.  Over the past five years, it has been slowly falling apart. How about if I use a parable to explain?

 

The Parable of the Hole in the Curtains

By (not Jesus) Rechelle

Once there was a woman who had a house that had a large window.  The woman kept the window covered because she had heard that if you looked out the window, you would die and go to hell.  She covered the window with thick curtains and kept them closed at all times.  One day, the woman noticed a small tear in one of the curtains.  Afraid of accidentally seeing what was on the other side of the window and condemning herself to hell, she decided to completely ignore the tear so that her eyes might not stray and she would not be condemned.  But the tear got bigger.  Soon it was a hole.  She tried to stitch the hole together without looking at it, but she was so afraid that she might glance at what was on the other side of the window, that she did a terrible job of patching the curtain and only made the situation worse.  The hole grew larger and soon other holes appeared.  

The holes in the curtain appeared whenever the woman read the bible.  Whenever she read about god asking someone to kill their child to prove their faith.  Whenever she read about god condoning slavery or misogyny or the murder of women (and not men) for having sex before marriage or for being a homosexual or for working on the sabbath or for disobeying your parents or for having sex with an animal (the animal has to be murdered too of course).  She tried to ignore these old laws that were written by the same god who is also Jesus and instead focus on the new laws.  Because those old laws were clearly written by an insane person and not an eternal god of love and mercy who longs for a relationship with human beings.  The new laws were a little better, but they still condoned slavery and misogyny and quite often they didn’t make any sense either.  

The woman began avoiding that room with the window altogether.  She didn’t want to watch the shredding curtain fall apart. She stayed in other rooms.  Dark rooms.  She threw herself into working for her church.  She became an elder.  She taught Sunday school.  She served on committees and directed choirs and organized plays for her church.  

But it was impossible. There was a room in her house with a light filled window.  And a curtain that was full of holes.  She couldn’t forget it was there.

Then she got a letter from her church.

The letter was a list of things that she had to promise to believe and do if she wanted to serve as an elder in her church for a second term. 

The woman absolutely did not want to serve as an elder in her church for a second term.  The woman did not like being an elder.   Being an elder was mostly about money.  How to get it and how to spend it.  She came to understand just how much money it took to maintain the large brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  The amount of money it took made her sick.  It was thousands and thousands of dollars every month.  She thought about how all that money could be used to alleviate human suffering and misery and instead it went to heat and cool and pay a mortgage on a huge brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  She thought about the hundreds of dollars that she gave every month to maintain the huge brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  She thought about how if she gave that money to a starving family or a hospital in Africa or a school in the slums of Brazil, she would be doing a much better thing than when she gave that money to heat and cool and staff a huge brick church building that stood empty six days a week.  But the bible commanded that the woman give ten percent of her money to the church and not to starving people in Africa.  The bible was more interested in the empty building and not the miserable people who were suffering and so was god.  The woman did not want to be an elder anymore because she wanted to forget about that money that went to heat and cool the huge brick empty church building, but the woman felt like she had to be an elder. Because that is what christians do.  They serve the church… or the the expensive brick building that stands empty six days a week.

So when she got that letter from her church…

And she read through that list of promises she had to make to be an elder a second time…

(They were the same promises that she had made the first time she served as an elder.  The promises hadn’t changed, but the woman had.)

She knew that she couldn’t make the promises again.

Because she didn’t believe in them anymore.

She especially knew that she did not believe in the bible.

So she walked away from her church.

And she went back to her dark house.

And she tore the curtain off the window.

And light streamed into the room.

And she danced in the golden beams.

And warmed her hands in the silvery streams.

And the glorious light bathed her mind and filled her heart.

With the truth.  The truth.  The truth.  

There is no god.

And it was good.

It was VERY GOOD.

And yeah…

She was going to die.

But she was not going to hell.

Because there was no hell.

When she died… she died.  It was over.  That’s all.

And it made every second of her life much more precious.

Because now, every minute needed to be spent well, spent carefully, spent honestly and spent joyously.

And that is how I (the woman in this story in case you couldn’t tell) became an atheist.

The end.

 

P.S.

Tomorrow!

I apologize for all the terrible things I believed while I was a christian shit-head for 41 years.  

You won’t want to miss that!

P.P.S.S.

You may have noted the rise in the usage of the word ‘shit’ on this blog.  Since I am no longer a christian I am giving myself permission to occasionally indulge in a well-placed curse word on this blog.  It has always been my desire as a writer to use language appropriately and well and to not be offensive just for the sake of being offensive.  Therefore, I promise to only use foul language when the situation absolutely demands it. Such as when referring to the bible, to god, and to homeschoolers.

The Topeka Capital Journal has been following a local pastor and his family that recently adopted four kids from Haiti.  The pastor was quoted in the Journal today as saying, “There are no accidents.”  Evidently this pastor is crediting the earthquake for finally allowing him to get his adoptive kids home.  Which is just so reassuring isn’t it?   All that horrifying death makes so much more sense to me now.  Thanks for clearing it up Pastor Tim.

You can read the full article here.  

The quote came from the following passage…

A man of God, Tim wasn’t prone to fits of doubting his Lord. He didn’t need to look any further than the sermon he was preparing for that Sunday on the Book of James. Chapter one begins, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.”

In the past, Tim and Alecia O’Byrne had thought other disasters would prove a vessel to carry their children home. None had done so yet. But Tim, thinking about the Book of James, said of the earthquake, “There are no accidents.”

 

It is my full hope and fervent wish that Pastor Tim will raise his Haitian orphans to know that god caused their parents not only to abandon them at an orphanage in order that they might be raised in a christian home in Kansas, BUT ALSO God caused an EARTHQUAKE and killed 300,000 people TO EXPEDITE THEIR ARRIVAL AT THEIR NEW HOME  where they will grow up in the knowledge that god loves them a lot more than all those people that died to make it happen.

 

Hallelujia!  

Glory!  

GLORY!!!!!!!!

CAN I GET AN AMEN???

AMEN!