Comment by IEatDinosaurMeat on April 16, 2011 at 10:03pm

Yeah, here are some personal experiences.

Such as the rapture(the idea that all Christians will go to heaven before the tribulation, which will be just before the end of the world), and the damaging things that does to a child. If you don't believe, your family will be taken away from you, and you will be left alone. If someone in your family doesn't believe they will be 'left behind' to be hurt, possibly tortured or killed. Try to imagine the fear whenever my parents where late coming home, or if the sky looked a little different that day or rolled in a particular way. These where things that would be signs that you've been left behind, and there was no knowing if you sinned between the time you last prayed and this rapture happened. The further mistrust for certain types of ideas and authorities this entails, and the self victimization deepens because of this. The idea that Christians may start being treated more equally rather than having special rights to display their symbols and spread their 'good news' is seen as persecution that further convinces them that 'the time is near.' And it seems the more they are called on for their militant, manipulative ways, the more militant and manipulative they will become and the more they will press this frightening perspective on children.

Second thing is the idea of demon possession and other types of spirituality that are frightening. Nothing pushed me away from Christianity than when someone told me "Wow, you are so spiritually sensitive" when I knew better. I had no sense of spirituality, but was very emotional none the less. What happened was the more emotional, the more passionate it got the more fake it felt, 'till I realized it was all put on and I had to reconsider this. I would imagine someone with a stronger biological or anatomical sense would understand the physical responses that would create this response and make it seem religious rather than chemical, but I'm relatively certain that I've never had a 'spiritual' experience. I was also told all sorts of stories about demon possession and demonic presences on the level of Augustine's experience of seeing demons behind doors (granted I never actually saw a demon), but every shadow had potential for one hiding there and that created a huge amount of fear. I was also told that if you go to the wrong movie theater there is a good chance a demon will take you over, and that demons are able to travel over radio waves so if you listen to the wrong stations a demon will come inside you.

I didn't get much sleep as a child.  

Comment by IEatDinosaurMeat on April 16, 2011 at 10:04pm

Coulda used some proofreading but... Insert excuse here

Comment by delapruch on April 16, 2011 at 11:24pm

@Tsmith.  thank you so much for sharing.  you are such a strong person for enduring that shit and coming out alive & rational!  i hope that your life now is free of all those fucks and that you share your story with anyone that you like, because it is so important that people know what really is happening in such christian upbringing---as you are certainly not alone.  we can find solace as Atheists in the fact that no matter how militant these idiots get because of the need to prepare for the rapture, etc.---it will never come.  every time a person testifies as to what happened when they are younger, in the context of being raised in a religion and how detrimental it was to them, that religion in question loses credibility for someone.  i hope that your are able to get more sleep now! and by the way, fuck proofreading, this is a blog---your story is powerful and stands on its own!

Comment by IEatDinosaurMeat on April 18, 2011 at 2:34am

Wow man, thanks. It feels good to get some of this stuff out, it feels pretty therapeutic. I never really blamed the people teaching me cause I know it's just what they where taught and what they get out of The Bible and stuff, just sorta figured they felt compelled to pass that on because of the risks to my soul. I recognize the perception, and I appreciate the effort and the motive behind it by those who love me as they 100% believe that this is urgent, important, necessary stuff.

As far as Catholic abuses, I'm not sure. I never really knew much about them. I grew up far removed from Catholicism. More often than not a Protestant doesn't think Catholics are even in the same religion. Many think Catholics worship Mary and not Jesus and therefore aren't Christians.

Comment by delapruch on April 18, 2011 at 6:23am



@TSmith.  again, thanks for sharing!  getting stuff out in the open is always good, as ultimately it fosters communication, and only with communication can any positive change really come about!  tradition, on the other hand---the passing of stuff on "because that's what they were taught"---this does not equal positive change.  if anything, this kind of cultural passing-of-the-buck means that no one has taken any time to re-investigate what relevance such tradition holds in our present day.  people who rely on tradition simply don't want to be bothered with thinking for themselves, and that is the backbone of religion in general.  people who were too afraid to take their own stance on subjects that we have all thought about as humans at one point (at least), like death or any sort of ethical conundrums, etc.---they simply were taught the structure that their parents were taught, and it was so much easier to just go along with it than to question it, that they just follow suit.  worse yet, they decide that rather than to try and break the chain by teaching their children different, or for that matter, just not indoctrinating them in the same manner, they just keep pumping that shit along the bloodline.  in fact, i wonder how many closet Atheists perpetuate their family’s religious traditions just in a sad attempt to keep the peace within their family?  as far as abuses go, if you visit the blogspot that i identified as the subject of this post, you will find plenty of instances of abuses documented concerning all three of the abrahamic religions.  as far as the differences between factions of christianity---news flash, it is all the same shit and the differences are there because people wanted to partially break with the tradition through reinterpretation---this allows them to still feel like they are collecting the gold stars that all good little christians are, so they can get into heaven when all the rest of us burn in their hell.  so for instance, a protestant doesn’t go to confession like a catholic.  a catholic can walk around with a bigger head because they feel that they are being that much more pious by telling all of their sins to a holier member of the cult.  i would never appreciate the effort by these lunatics to spread their disease to me in the hope of saving me from something that is just another chapter in their big fiction anyway.  i mean, if you come up with a story that there is a big orange demonic pig running around and that it will get people, and then you tell them that if they do x, y and z to avoid the big orange pig’s wrath, the fact still remains that both the big orange pig, all the believers in the story of the pig, all the believers in its wrath, as well as those practicing everyday to save people from the pig’s wrath---are still all part of a fictional story produced by a lunatic who may or had some spoiled ham at one point in their life provoking an orange pig nightmare or something!  lol.  just because you want to save people from a fiction, doesn’t make you any better of a person, and it doesn’t make the fiction any less of a fiction to begin with. 

Comment by IEatDinosaurMeat on April 18, 2011 at 9:21am

Very true.

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