Today is the Sunday of me not going to church anymore.

If you’re new here, it will probably help to know that, although I’ve been an atheist since 2008, I’ve been attending church with my wife and kids since 2006. We go every Sunday with exceptions for illness, travel, or weekend house guests. It’s been rather weird for me, both attending church as an out and out atheist and in giving my reasons to people who think it equally weird that an out and out atheist goes to a Christian church.

Although my reasons were based on complex emotions, they seemed simple to say.

1. I love my wife and want to support her in her “spiritual needs”
2. I didn’t want to have separate lives away from her and the kids
3. I wanted to be around to talk about the religious topics when they come up
4. I wanted to try and stop the kids from becoming Christians themselves.

That last one was kinda unspoken. But it was there.

Over the last year it seemed, more and more, like these were bad reasons to go to church.

As it turns out, I can support my wife’s spiritual needs just fine without going. All I have to do is watch the kids while she goes to her different functions and pay for the occasional book or fundraiser.

We already have separate lives anyways from work and school. I’m not terribly worried about TiggerGal or myself having an affair or anything from the extra 2 hours a week we’re away.

We don’t really talk about the religious topics outside of stating what the standard dogma is. TiggerGal is a fantastically wonderful woman and a terrific wife but a hideous debater. I married her because she was sweet, loving, and kind… not for her rhetorical stills or oratory acumen.  That and I know more about theology than she does, so these discussions go wonky. And for me and LadyBug, the best time to talk is when we’re driving or reading stories, so I don’t really have to be in Church for that.

Oh, and LadyBug was recently baptized… whatever that means for us.

On top of that I’ve been growing increasingly dissatisfied with the quality my church friend relationships, discussions, and debates.

So I’ve been on my way out for a while.

All this came to a head last week during a guest sermon about obedience to god. The guest pastor is an intern who I consider a really good guy and a friend. But his sermon had a little bit about the Amalekites. You know them? God tells Saul, via King Samuel, to completely wipe out the Amalekites.

 ¹ Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. ² This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. ³ Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” – 1 Samuel 15:1-3 NIV

Freaking genocide. Wipe everything out. Even the children. Even the innocent babies. Even the sheep! What did the sheep do to deserve that?

So Saul wipes out Amalek, but doesn’t kill off everything as instructed.

⁷ Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt. ⁸ He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. ⁹ But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed. – 1 Samuel 15:7-9

Saul wipes out everything except the best animals and the Amalek King. And god is pissed!

 ²² But Samuel replied:

“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
²³ For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has rejected you as king.”

-1 Samuel 15:22-23

So the guest pastor made the case, in non-denom progressive Christian tones, that god wants you to be obedient. Obedience is better than sacrifice. Then he went on about how obedience is less about rules and guidelines, blah blah blah.

Well, here I am in the pews thinking WTF!?!?! You one of the most morally reprehensible examples of Yahweh’s asshattery as a reason why people should be obedient?

And so I posted on Facebook.

Seriously, how do to bring up the divinely commanded genocide of the Amalekites as and example of how god isn’t all about killing and just wants you to worship him? I mean seriously. Bad example. And I love how no one bats and eye about the slaughter of men women children and animals ( what did the animals do) because the true lesson was that Saul didn’t fully obey. WTF?

That was my mistake. Some of my atheist and fairweather Christian friends chimed in agreeing that this was disgusting. And then one of my Christian friends started a discussion suggesting that Yahweh used Hitler as a tool for his justice. It all went bad

Guest pastor messaged me the next day. He was disappointed that I think he’s an idiot and hoped I would have just talked to him individually instead of calling him out like that. And I think he’s right. We were friends and I should have just talked to him directly. I apologized immediately and he forgave me.

That whole interaction really made me question my church attendance. What was I doing there? Seriously, what was the point? Why am I even getting mad at his sermon? His sermon wasn’t for me, it was for people who already agree with him. The challenging part for them is the obedience, not the “my god is totally cool commanding mass murder”.

I forgot that I’m a guest in their house. I don’t have to be there. No one is forcing me to go. Even TiggerGal, when I talked with her about my desire to stop going, reiterated that she never pressured or forced me. She felt honored that I wanted to go with her, but that it was my decision.

So I stopped fooling myself.

There’s no sense in going. No sense in worrying about what other people think. No sense worrying about people seeing me as “that atheist”. I’m already “that atheist”. I might as well own it. No sense in holding on to the belief that going to church, as an atheist, makes me a morally good person. It just makes me a martyr. A whiney, frustrated, angry martyr.

And martyrs are annoying.

So now I’m home. The house is quiet, and I’m going to head over to Lowes to get some o-ring’s to fix a leaky faucet.

And it feels good.

It feels good to have 2 hours of my life back.

It feels good to be free of the self-imposed prison I was in, caused by religion.

True freedom is definitely a life without Jesus.

And today, I’m a little bit more free.

Similar to his earlier book The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, Loftus assembles a group of counterapologetic heavy hitters to really dismantle Christianity in every possible. The collection of essays feel like they’re’s written for academics, so I felt that some of the parts were kinda dry… like reading a boring technical manual. In fact, that’s exactly what I felt when I read the first chapter, by David Eller. My sincerest apologies to him as a person, but I normally find his work dull and unengaging.  Eller focuses a lot about the cultural aspects of Christianity, that it looks so much like any other culture that it’s probably just any other culture. Rather than, you know, being true.

Towards the end of his chapter though, things started picking up. This was specifically when he starts writing about how Christianity evolved and adapted when it came to America and beyond. It was probably more relatable for me. I get really bored with the history geekouts. But as I closed out Chapter 1 and started in Chapter 2, something in me died.

That something was the Power that Christianity had over my emotions. The end of Chapter 1 made Christianity feel not just “more false”, but blindingly, painfully, bluntly, and ridiculously more false.  And as I went through the next chapters, this Power continued to wither and fade.

Since becoming an atheist, I felt it important to actually keep an open mind… to have an idea of what I’d anticipate seeing  to change my mind. And while I still think it’s important to actually keep an open mind (and not just say the words), I’d be lying if I said that my anticipation came with a lot of emotions.

What were those emotions? It’s kinda that “on guard” feeling we in the psychology biz call “fight for flight”. It’s like a defensiveness… but more so. It’s trying to simultaneously stay open for a genuinely new correct information, while being prepared to catch nonsense, while being ready to respond in an adult and assertive manner. All that… stuff takes energy and is quite draining.

I also need to admit that a huge part of those emotions are the “what if they’re right” worries.

I mean, I “know” in my head that Christianity has been false for quite some time, but there’s always been that bit of emotional “what if”. I think it has to do with the effects of conformity:  the natural impulse to think and act everyone else. So many people in my life are Christians, that it takes a lot of effort to combat that those effects. But it’s easier when more atheists are around. And after reading The End of Christianity, it kinda feels like the conformity effects are mostly gone.

Hmm… that didn’t occur to me until I typed it just now. The End of Christianity made Christianity so absurd that it took away the emotional distress of not confirming to it. Christianity isn’t just wildly improbable, it isn’t even remotely possible.

In fairness to my other life experiences. I wasn probably headed that way already and this book just took it over the top

Terror management theory predicts that I’ll be a more passionate atheist the more my worldview is threatened. Christianity doesn’t feel like a threat to me, so I don’t care as much.

I’m still an atheist, but I’ve definitely noticed that my rant blog is harder to write for. Thanks John, et al.

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Some other quick notes. My favorite chapters were the ones by Dr. Valerie Tarico on god psychology and Dr Victor Stenger on near death experiences and the afterlife. Richard Carrier’s stuff was good too, although his intelligent design chapter was a bit hard to follow. The biggest surprise for me was Robert Price. I’ve listened to him on atheist podcasts and utterly can’t stand the way he talks. His phrases are way too densely packed with references and quotes. He writes exactly how he talks and I was quite shocked to see how much better his communication style is on paper than on the radio. Same content, same style, night and day difference.

But then I stop and have to correct myself. That thought isn’t true. Even if all the Christians of the world were just as sweet as lollipops, I still wouldn’t believe. My belief has little to do with manners and almost everything to do with the truth of Christianity’s claims.

(Although, if Christianity did claim that it made people demonstrably nicer, and all Christians were significantly more nice compared to the non-Christian population, that probably would be evidence in favor of Christianity).

So long as I disgregard politeness as evidence for Christianity being true, I can’t really say that rudeness is evidence against Christianity. I’m not justified in thinking that thought.

This has some huge problems for Christians who think the best way to minister to people is just to “love on them”. Think about what it would mean if being nice is evidence for the truth of your beliefs.

If I’m nice to you, does that atheism true?

If I’m nice to you, does that mean Star Trek is better than Star Wars?

If I’m nice to you, does that mean that purple is a better color than green?

Hm… but now that I think about it… for many people, it kinda does.

Yes, Jesus pooped.

He was referring to the baby Jesus of the Christmas story and that when the Lord Most High entered into the world, he entered in the most basic and humblest of ways. Jesus lowered himself, reduced himself to a helpless little baby, to be delivered in a dirty manger.

I think this was the pic he used in the sermon PowerPoint to highlight just how much the big JC was slumming it.

 Pretty janky, huh?

From there he started riffing about how simply human, god had become. The baby Jesus had no special super hero, magic powers. There was no baby bottles magically floating across the room… well at that time period I don’t think there were baby bottles.

And yes, of course, Jesus pooped.

This got quite a chuckle from the congregation as the  rebellious thrill from saying something not normally said in Church spread through the pews.

Now although this sounded cool and edgy, it doesn’t feel like it makes a whole lot of sense. If Jesus was perfect, would/could that imply that he would be able to fully absorb and digest anything he ate or drank? I mean, we pee and poop mostly because we eat and drink things that our body can’t use. So we have to get rid of all the waste. Wouldn’t a perfect being be able to forgo peeing and pooping?

Wouldn’t a perfect being not need to eat food in the first place?

And what about the “not having superpowers” thing? That struck me as making less sense. So, adult Jesus could walk on water, heal the sick, instantly make a whole bunch of food, self-resurrect. If baby Jesus couldn’t, is it a knowledge thing or a physical body thing? When, then, did Jesus obtain his magic powers?

Maybe he’s a mutant and his powers manifested in adolescence during a time of great stress. I dunno.

I get that PastorItaly was being rhetorical, but taken literally, what he said makes no sense. And what good is a sermon that’s all rhetoric and not actually true?

The entire process was an eye opener for me and helped to clearly identify some things about my leadership style that definitely need some improvement. My agency’s leadership was there as well so I was able to get some really help feedback on things I can do better.  One of the biggest things that was apparent to everyone, leadership and coworkers a like, is that I micromanage. Actually, worse off, I don’t delegate and prefer to handle things by myself. 

Big parts of the process that were better served being tasked to someone else, I just did it myself.

To put it bluntly, I didn’t trust people to do the job.

I’d like to clarify though that although I often have a clear vision about how I like to see things happen, I’m not a neurotic control freak. To me, it doesn’t have to be a certain type of red, or a certain rectangular proportion. It just has to work. On the most basic and fundamental it just has to get done, details be damned.

And it was on that most basic and fundamental level that I didn’t trust people… Don’t trust people…. Can’t trust people(?).

I’m talking about very basic, rudimentary, pre-requisite knowledge, skills, abilities, and ethics that were lacking in people.

For the precious few people who I could trust, people who had evidenced themselves as being competent and dependable, I overburdened them with work. They were my go-to people that I could count on to get the work done. And if they didn’t know how to do it, they’d figure it out on their own.

But precious few they were… which meant a handful of us were stuck with most of the work. Or more accurately, I saddled only a handful of us with most of the work.

As I mentioned earlier, I had some of my agency’s leadership in town to help. These were two women from the State and Regional levels who came just to lend a hand, and within a couple hours, I clearly knew why they had achieved the leadership positions they were in.

Whereas some people say “I’ll go where you need me” and then wait around to be directed, these two leaders just started finding needs to be filled. Needs that I didn’t even consider were taken care of. It was amazing!

Those two women also helped me see something disappointingly unjust. That week, and the days that followed, I heard from my leaders, my co-workers, my friends, and my family about how I don’t trust people. But for all the talk about how I need to trust people more, very little was said about how people can make themselves more trustworthy.

Actually, strike that… nothing was said about how people can make themselves more trustworthy. Indeed, the feedback I got from my visiting leaders was about how I, in my role as a leader, can make people more trustworthy. I could add skill building to performance plans, do trainings, redesign systems, hold people accountable. Every single suggestion was totally valid, totally doable, and totally on my agenda. But all the suggestions were of things for me to do with and for others.

The feedback I got from my friends, family, and co-workers was less helpful… more of this general “just trust people” stuff. The funny part is that the people who told me most often to trust more were most often the people who were untrustworthy themselves!

I get that I need to trust you more… but what are you going to do to earn my trust?

I later realized that my friends/family/co-workers aren’t really talking about trust… they’re talking about faith. Just have faith… regardless of the evidence, regardless of their past actions and failures, regardless of past disappointments. Just have faith.

Nevermind about getting the job done, much less done properly. It’s more important that I just trust people.

Well please forgive me if I find it more important to accomplish my goals than to go through some song and dance to make sure you feel good because I trusted you.

The LeadershipLadies, on the other hand, were talking about confidence. Or more specifically, confidence building: giving people the tools they need to get the job done, mandating that they use those tools, and holding them accountable if they don’t. To them, the job’s gotta get done. Ideally, it’s gotta be done properly. No one cares about excuses or rationales about how I trusted others to do the work and they didn’t do it properly. At the end of the day, if the job isn’t done the responsibility falls on the leader.

So I can either do it all myself, and drive myself crazy. Or I can better train others to do it for me… create the environment where people are more trustworthy, where I can trust that they will do their jobs to the highest capacity. And if they can’t, they’ll figure out on their own how to do it. Apparently, the second way is more effective.

Here’s the most ironic part of all. What the LeadershipLadies were essentially saying is that I can’t even trust people to make themselves more trustworthy on their own! I have to do that too!

Well… I only have to do that if I want to accomplish my goals. Which I do…

So I have a lot of work to do on myself. Faith is worthless.

PS: Here’s a few more things I need to improve on

• I don’t diseminate information well. When I have one conversation, I don’t do a good job of relaying the results to the larger group.
• Along the same lines, my personal gimmic is being the “Answer Guy” so I need to resist the urge to be the gatekeeper of knowledge and figure out ways to encourage people to find the info on their own.
• I’m too quick to let people slide when they crap out on me. I could do better at holding  them accountable

So we’re at the dinner table a couple days ago and our daughter, LadyBug, is talking about her day at school. Since I’m so tired from the day, I’m half listening. All of a sudden she blurts out:

“…my daddy is an atheist!”

My wife, TiggerGal, and I were both taken aback… largely because we didn’t quite catch the context of this statement at all. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but she was smiling and excited when she said it. I was really curious as to what this was all about. So I asked her when she said this at school. She told us it was during a class activity. Apparently she was supposed to write about her parents. So for me, she wrote down that I was an atheist. She said that her teacher replied, “Where’d that come from!?!?” But after that, the teacher didn’t make a big deal of it either.

And that was it. There was really nothing else to it. I looked at TiggerGal and she didn’t look upset. She looked amused.

Actually, there was one extra thing. TiggerGal asked LadyBug wrote about her mommy. She said:

My mommy is 39 years old!

TiggerGal exclaimed:

I’m not 39!!!! I’m 38!!!

It’s weird just how “not a big deal” the whole thing was.

Our focus is on our city’s downtown area, and there are five major churches located very near to each other in the heart of down town: Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopalian,  Methodist. Inviting them to the party is a no-brainer. They are right there in the middle if where we’re going to survey the homeless. The people we find are their neighbors.

Accompanied by the Executive Director of our local homeless coalition, I met with each of these major churches to talk about the exciting plans we have for our city. We talked Registry Week event, our resources gathered so far, the methodology of housing the chronically homeless, and some of our long term needs. Oh and somewhere in there I met with PastorItaly from our family’s church.

So that was six churches in a total of two weeks. And I’m happy/unsurprised to say that all the meetings went well. Magnificently better than the meeting with the faith based shelter I blogged about. These spiritual leaders really “got it”. They understood the problem of homelessness. And while they needed a bit of explanation into the housing first model, they also understood that our current methods aren’t really solving the problem. They were all tired of programs that seem to perpetuate homelessness and were looking for real effective solutions.

It was a very successful two weeks. But it wasn’t until yesterday at lunch, when the irony of sending the atheist to meet with the faith community to talk about how to better serve the poor and needy. But this isn’t a post to bash Christians. No way, kudos to them for answering the call. This is a post of appreciation. Thank you to them for working with us to end homelessness!

I think something is getting lost in translation. So I ask her if she means “ex-planet” like Pluto or exoplanet like Gliese 581 d?

No she means “X Planet”.

So I keep asking her questions and she tells me that it’s a secret planet.

Oh! She means Planet X! (aka Nibiru).

The Nibiru collision is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object (either a collision or a near-miss) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Planet X or Nibiru. The idea that a planet-sized object could collide with or pass by Earth in the near future is not supported by any scientific evidence and has been rejected as pseudoscience by astronomers and planetary scientists.

Bracing myself to write a nasty letter, I asked her if one of her teachers told her about Planet X. She said that it was actually her friend who has a dad who is an astronaut.

“An astronomer?”, I ask.

“No, an astronaut,” she responds.

So I proceed to go, bit by bit, over why Planet X almost certainly isn’t real, why it’s highly unlikely that her friend’s dad is an astronaut, and why it’s more likely that he’s just some crank who believes in crazy stuff.

While going over the scientific criticisms section, we end up having a really great discussion about evidence – specifically, what you should expect to see if your beliefs were true.

I used her brother Squirt as an example. If someone told me that Squirt pooped in his diaper, what evidence would we expect to observe? Well, we’ll probably smell something really stinky, and the smell would get worse the closer we got to his butt. He may be a little cranky from feeling incomfortable. And his diaper may feel a little different from a clean diaper. We can probably figure out if he pooped way before we even look inside. However, Squirt may have recently passed gas, could be hungry, and have only pee’d.

What if someone told us that Squirt pooped, but he didn’t stink, he was emotionally great, and his diaper physically felt like a clean diaper. Then I’d probably think that person had a mistaken belief.

The inverse works too. What if someone told is that Squirt hadn’t pooped, but he stank, was cranky, and his diaper felt full. Then I’d probably think that person had a mistaken belief, too.

We usually think of theories as making predictions, things we expect to see in the future. But theories should also explain the current data, and show us things that we should expect to see right now. If the theory doesn’t even do that, it’s a bad theory.

So getting back to “X Planet”, we went over all the things that should be happening if an extra planet sized object was near enough to interact with our solar system. And of course, none of those things are present.

And she understood it.

Well… maybe not all of it…

But at least she understood that the issue isn’t as clear cut as his friend’s dad made it seem.

The day snuck up on me, I didn’t realize it was happening so soon. Well, I actually did realize, but every time the topic came up, I blotted it out of my mind. I’m really ambivalent about it all, even today. On one hand I’m not happy at all that she suddenly more Christian now than she was the day before. On the other, I respect her right to make her own decisions and wish to support her in her goals.

My dad did that for me quite a bit. He never really pried or questioned what I wanted to do. He just encouraged me and supported me. He also helped me think through the details of what I was getting into. I wanted to play sax? Okay, what was involved? I wanted to go to grad school for Social Work? Okay, lets look at some sites.

Being the Chinese numbers guy that he was, he always processed the logistics with me. It mattered less what I did, and more that I did it mindfully and throughly. I needed to do my research.

But he never really questioned my paths.

So I sent him an email on sunday morning:

Hey dad, just thinking of you and wanted to thank you again for letting me follow my own path and supporting me with whatever that path is.

He wrote back:

It is a source of pleasure and pride watching you find your own way.
Dad will always be there!

That’s how you do it. And in that same… spirit(?)… I hope to do the same for LadyBug.

My wife, TiggerGal, was bathed in joy the whole day. She was proud of her daughter becoming a young lady (!?!?!). She was proud of our son Squirt growing so big. And she was proud of her atheist husband in his love for his faithful little girl.

The baptism was to take place in one of our Church friend’s pools. I guess the chlorine doesn’t affect the ritual too badly. No clue why they decided end of October would be good baptism weather; the water was quite chilly. Although it’s supposed to be the father who helps dunk the child in the water, everyone knew there was no way I was getting in there to do the process. Instead, I’d film the event on our camera from the heathen gallery.

On the way over to the house, TiggerGal, moved with compassion, told me that I was the most “Christian” Non-Christian that she knew.

Well… actually, she said I was the most “Non-Christian” Christian that she knew, but I unscrambled the meaning and restated the correct version. I said that a “non-Christian” Christian would be a Christian who acts all bad and ungoldy. What you mean is “Christian” Non-Christian who would be a nonbeliever who exemplifies the values and love of Jesus Christ.

She confirmed that’s the good sounding one was what she meant.

At the pool, there were 3 other people being baptized: 2 adults and 1 other child. Being only 1.5-years-old, Squirt was quite a handful, and I missed a big part of the ceremony keeping him inside so we wouldn’t jump in and drown. Apparently god won’t rescue babies who sink, even if it’s a Church function, so I had to be on my toes (that’s why god invented baby gates?).

When it was LadyBug’s turn, she and TiggerGal waded into the very cold water and one of the other mothers in attendance watched Squirt behind a glass door. I popped out my camera and set the video on.

Watching through the LCD screen, it stung quite a bit to here LadyBug say “yes” to the “do you accept Jesus as blah blah”. The public pronouncement makes it more real for everyone. But, 10 seconds later she was dipped in and it was over. I gave her a towel and a hug.

Who knows what will happen in the future. She’s only 6 after all.

On the way home, I thought about what TiggerGal said: most “Christian” Non-Christian. The meaning seemed obvious at the time, but it feels like it can be interpreted in may different ways.

Taken literally, I guess it could mean that I was a non-Christian who does the most “Christian” rituals and events. Like going to church or participating in baptisms. In that way, yeah probably.

If you take “Christian” as a catch all label for every imaginable good quality a person could have, then yeah I guess so too. Kinda in a “Christians are people who do good things and non-Christians are people who do bad things” sort of way.

But it doesn’t feel very “Christian” to support your child as they make a public pronouncement of commitment to a different belief system. I mean, how many Christians would support a child who wanted a bat miztvah? Or would support a child who wanted to go on a Hajj? Or a debaptsim ceremony? Is it really ”Christian” to permit a child follow their own path?

Or is this just trying to give Christianity the credit for my dad’s secular love and wisdom?

But I get that she was making a compliment, in her own way.

Towards the end of the meeting, and without warning, my Church friend blurts out that I’m a nonbeliever.

What the hell!?!?!

So the shelter leaders immediately perk up and one of them flat out asks, “So why don’t you believe?”

I’m there freaking out that this is even happening, and all I can respond is, “I make it a personal policy not to discuss my religious beliefs while I’m on duty”. Which isn’t exactly true. I’ve told people my beliefs when asked before… but this was different. Way different.

The leader goes on that the Bible specifically states that everyone knows God, but that some just don’t choose to follow. He went on to say that he understood if someone was confused or unsure, but that it wasn’t possible that someone could actually not believe in God.

He and my church friend bantered about their pre-born again lives and made some comments about science and math. I wish I remembered better, but my head was kinda spinning after being outed as an atheist during a meeting at the most ardently religious shelter in our city. I kinda wish I could get the chapter and verse  of where the “everyone knows God” bit came from.

So the leader guy sounds all excited and really wants to talk about why I don’t believe. I’m thinking to myself that if he thinks that atheists – in principle - can’t exist… what good is having an actual discussion? I mean seriously, in what world would that be productive?

More posts to follow on this.