Hello everyone, and welcome to a once and future Nut! I’m your host, QueenofSwords, and this week’s Nutwatch is dedicated to Corgan Sow, who introduced me to the neuroses collection of a former atheist who, prior to his conversion to Christianity, was Nurse Ratchet’s love child by the Terminator. Weren’t we all, though, before we saw the light? Naturally, fundamentalism could only make matters worse, much worse, though it’s a relief to have a PR risk like this on the other side; get ready to cross over into the mirror universe, because this week’s Nutwatch Ex-plodes and Ex-humes
The ex-atheist in question is one A. S. A. Jones, perhaps a pseudonym for A. S. I. Nine, and his story begins in the depths of his depravation.
I was a devout atheist
Mr. Jones : I didn’t play the organ at the non-service held nowhere.
for over twenty years… The following is an account of how I went from hardcore skepticism to hardcore worship of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
This worship must have involved a lot of videos and many cries of “Oh, God!”
In the absence of a religious belief to answer life's questions, I turned my mental energy to science.
Unfortunately, science barely detected the feeble flicker and couldn’t do anything with it. But guess what, it was just right for religion.
RATIONAL THOUGHT REPLACES MY COMPASSION FOR OTHERS
At least he’s got the capslock down pat. You can tell he’ll make a superb fundy some day.
I recalled staring at a swarming mass of termites one sunny day, thinking that… there was little difference between them and us.
Mr. Jones : That was the day I began my secret identity as Termite Man!
I smashed a few dozen with my shoe and ground them into the dirt.
Mr. Jones : I went on from there to smashing people with my shoe and grinding galaxies into the dirt. This is what godless atheism does to you.
What did it matter if these died?… People died every day. The end result would always be death for both the individuals and, eventually, the species.
This guy sounds like some morose maudlin character from the Discworld. I can picture Death saying, “HE GETS TEN OUT OF TEN FOR MASTERY OF THE OBVIOUS.”
I knew the psychology of humans almost as well as their anatomies…
Mr. Jones : Thanks to my superior intellect, I had learned much in my short visit. Soon I would return to the mother ship and make my report on the puny Earthlings to my superiors. They would be pleased! The Empire of Calathar Vrax shall encompass this weak planet and its feeble population shall be fed to our pet boribors!
They were like guinea pigs, only more predictable, and my chief form of entertainment was to see how skillfully I could manipulate them. I knew that I was supposed to care about them, but I didn't.
Why were you supposed to care about them? Is that part of the Atheists’ Charter or did mommy offer you lollipops if you made friends with the other kiddies?
My extreme point of view had reduced people into throwaway metabolic units; I had become as cold and indifferent as the logic that I exalted.
Mr. Jones : I still had problems with the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, but I was practising it devoutly. Works better than Rohypnol, that move.
If my education would benefit anyone, it would benefit me. I passed up an offer of a low paying research position for a secure and higher paying job in a chemistry lab. My brain rotted there for 40 hours a week for 10 years.
Ah, that explains the conversion to Christianity. Anyway, you can tell atheism’s not doing the author any good, hence his constant nastiness. I keep expecting to hear that he dropped suppositories into the bags of trick-or-treaters.
RATIONAL THOUGHT TURNS FROM SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY
And sometimes the problem starts with the very first word in the sentence…
Science had done nothing to answer the questions that raged in my head. Why should I care? How much should I care? Should I care at all?
“Should I charge for my caring? Is that legal in this state?”
I tried several other atheist philosophers who tried to assign meaning to a life created by chance and I decided that they were all full of crap.
Mr. Jones : Being intimately acquainted with crap, I was supremely qualified to make this decision. I doubt any simple-minded human could have done it, though.
If our life is the result of randomness and chance, it is meaningless, no matter how we try to convince ourselves otherwise.
This is either an example of the royal “we”, or the author is speaking on behalf of Calathar Vraxians everywhere. He must be their ambassador, sent to find out how the Earthlings survived without having the meanings of their lives handed to them from an outside entity. This could be the turning point for the Empire, folks. Stay tuned.
I set out to take advantage of moral relativism and effectively destroyed any of my remaining conscience.
Mr. Jones : If I saw a cute little bunny rabbit run over dead on the road, I would laugh maniacally and say, “That’s it for Easter this year!”
MY PHILOSOPHY TURNS ANTI-CHRISTIAN
Thereby making him the anti-christ. Great Scott, the end times have finally started.
The worst idiots were the Christians… Their pretentiousness sickened me, despite my being equally pretentious toward them.
This is along the lines of “Before I was a Christian, I was the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, but now that I’m a Christian, I’m only one of the above.” No one ever seems to come to Christianity if they’re at all normal.
My anti-Christian arguments became my ultimate diversion to a hopeless life… I learned that religious debate wasn't as much about truth as it was about language and presentation.
Mr. Jones : Since I had accurately pegged creationist debate, Kent Hovind struck me off his Christmas card list and Duane Gish refused to return my calls.
THE PARADOX OF BIBLICAL JABBERWOCKY
A thought occurred to me that if I were to read 'Jabberwocky' the same way I read the bible, it wouldn't make any sense at all.
Mr. Jones : A further thought occurred that if I were to paint pneumonia the same way I galloped the moon, it wouldn’t lower the price of tea in Beijing. Who’d have thunk it?.
I made a resolution to read the entire Bible again, only this time I was going to read it as I would poetry or fiction, and not as a proposal of fact.
I’ve got bad news for you, Mr. Jones – the story’s “characters” are less developed than a roll of unused film and there’s a weird deus ex machina at the end.
Intellectually, I found that my mind could logically accept two very different interpretations of almost everything I was reading. One interpretation of any verse or passage would render the whole story as nonsensical. But the other interpretation allowed the whole story to make sense.
No doubt you also applied this reasoning to the Holy Qu’ran, the Bhagavad Gita, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Tao Te Ching, the Book of Mormon and Dianetics. Just think of how they would all make sense if you could mentally massage them into the correct interpretation.
If my mind was capable of accepting interpretations that allowed the whole book to make sense, then what was it in me that wanted it not to make sense?
Why do you have to accept interpretations? Why can’t the book just make sense, period? Why does it have to be cloaked in mystery to the point where one has to read Jabberwocky to get insights into it? Pity the poor Third World islanders who don’t get a copy of Through the Looking Glass along with their bibles.
Every time I found fault with its god, I ended up finding a fault of my own. What was I doing when I condemned this god for commanding Moses to kill?
You were condemning this god for commanding Moses to kill, that’s what you were doing. If you have any further lapses of memory, you might want to see a doctor, and preferably before you forget who you are and where you live.
On a lighter note, this made me think of Moses as a Dobermann Pinscher with foaming jaws, straining on the leash while God yelled, “Go, boy! Kill! Kill!”
Was I arrogantly making my morality superior to that of the being who allegedly authored all of morality?
Not just that, you were saying this being was wrong to order genocide! How screwed up can you get? Only an atheist would be so ridiculous as to condemn the destruction of people because they belonged to a certain race. I mean, really.
Was I condemning the actions of an entire nation, which was trapped in a kill or be killed situation?
They especially had to kill the little male children. Those toddlers could have stabbed them in the back or beaten them to death. Of course, virgin women are known to never harm anyone, so it was OK to keep them alive, and maybe screw them as thanks for their pacifistic natures.
What was it in me that wanted to express outrage at Jesus Christ for telling me that I had to give away everything to be considered worthy to follow him? Was it my own selfishness?
Indeed. How selfish to want food and shelter. As we all know, Jesus never once ate or lived in a house, and I’m sure he gave away his clothes as well, trooping naked through Galilee to the consternation of the locals.
For weeks, I was on a high, the type of high that comes about by feeling that one is on the edge of making some sort of profound discovery.
And not the type of high that comes about by a bottle of chemical solvent left accidentally open by one’s coworkers? No, I take that back : the author’s coworkers would probably have done such a thing on purpose, just to be rid of him.
What I had to say about who Christ was, said more about me than it did about Him.
By the same token, what God had to say about who we are says more about Him than it does about us. And according to Him, we’re all worthless. Serious abandonment issues here, Dr. Freud?
At this moment, I saw it. I saw what the truth of the Bible was! And I was humbled. More than humbled, I was broken.
Snapped in two like a faulty oreo.
The truth wasn't about cud chewing bunnies or how much precipitation fell during Noah's flood.
The truth was about aliens and the truth was out there. Now all I needed was a sexy redheaded pathologist at my side, and I would find my destiny, also the aliens.
It was the truth about human nature and our efforts to rise above it!
I’ll bet that if you kneaded us with yeast and baked us at about three hundred fahrenheit, we’d rise beautifully.
It was the truth about human spirit being led by divine spirit!
Like a sheep to the abattoir.
The moment I was made aware of my despicable nature…
…I held a funeral service for the termites I had squished.
…this man was able to see the horrible nature present in all of humanity and yet he had sacrificed himself to save us from ourselves.
Lucky for himself he got himself back, so he and himself and his father who’s himself as well can fill us with themselves, and also himself, as long as it’s not ourselves. This is like doing a pronoun exercise after drinking the entire contents of a brewery.
In a very real sense, my sinful nature had caused the death of an innocent man.
Damn, if you’d just kept reading, you would have come across the epilogue, where the guy comes back to life. He’s like Dracula that way – never stays dead.
I never believed in hell prior to this, but one of my first thoughts, after seeing how hellish a person that I was, was that I deserved to be in it.
Mr. Jones : Good morning, is that the Hellton? I’d like to make a reservation, please – your Presidential Material Suite, with a Lake of Fireside view. And I hope you provide good doom service, or I shall be forced to patronize Helliday Inn.
A NEW CREATURE
No more rational or tolerant than the old one. But perhaps he’s referring to the parasite which took up residence within his skull, like those brain worms Khan used in Star Trek II?
For the first time in my life, I became aware of my soul and how dirty it was when the light of Christ fell upon it.
There was a gravy stain on the top half of my soul and any amount of, um, other stains on the lower half. I immediately sent my soul to the cleaners and my brain kept it company.
My accusing finger turned around and pointed right back at me.
And then it said, “Pull me!”
I sucked! Christianity wasn't what was wrong with the world!… I was what was wrong with the world.
Once more this guy’s ego comes dashing to the forefront. If he couldn’t be the very best, the apex of humanity, he would be the very worst, the kind who isn’t even the dregs, who doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as “dregs”. Either way, he’s got to be special.
Within days, almost every viewpoint I had once so loudly announced, changed. I could no longer justify my advocacy of abortion, homosexuality or pre-marital sex because I recognized these options for what they were, that being selfishness.
Mr. Jones : Selfish homosexuals, denying the rest of us the pleasure of their virile, muscular bodies. And selfish people having sex, when some of us can’t even find a proper-sized donut for a lonely Friday night!
I couldn't enjoy television because much of what it offered was an offense to the god I had discovered.
“Look at the people on the screen,” Krishna muttered in an offended tone. “Are you seeing how few arms they have? And their skin, I am not believing it, but why is their skin color not blue? How disgusting can you be getting?”
But the most astounding change that took place in me was that I was freed from my cold indifference in matters of the heart.
Mr. Jones : So I blew the whistle to summon my seven children and sang a song about how much I loved them, before running to find their pretty governess and yodeling a marriage proposal to her.
My atheistic philosophy had allowed me to lose my compassion for others. I no longer had the ability to love anyone, not even myself.
Replace “even” with “especially”, because I don’t think you’ve got your self-flagellation routine quite correct yet.
The more I emptied myself of myself, the clearer the truth became… Jesus Christ became my God and my grand obsession,
My God, my girl, my house, my land, my horse, my ass, my horse’s ass and my own private Idaho. The Borg Queen to your drone, so to speak. Either way, I’m relieved that you decided to become obsessed with a non-existent being; people like Dan Barker and Stephen Jay Gould must be sighing with relief that they are now safe from your parasitical neediness.
and for many months, I spent hours with my mind locked in meditation, trying to connect with Him in a more tangible way.
Mr. Jones : Grow more tentacles, Lord, and wrap them around me closely.
I wasn't disappointed. There is a point that one can reach in prayer where there is nothing at all left of oneself, and it is in that moment that God makes Himself known.
Why not? After all, there’s nothing that can possibly offer him any competition at that point. You have been obliterated : there is an empty eggshell, containing neither white nor yolk, and religion crawls into that like a happy worm. Then the pendulum swings in the opposite direction and you revert to your former intolerant irrational self, albeit under a different banner, with the article
…in order to make this life objectively meaningful, there must be an after-life.
And in order to make an ice-cream truly tasty, there must be another ice cream that you can eat and eat without it ever ending.
When Christians make a distinction between a person's mind and a person's 'heart',
they prefer to deal with the latter.
this is the issue they are addressing. The logic of the mind can come up with any number of moral, rational options, but the 'heart', that part of the mind that is above logic, is what makes the decision.
And it’s only when you listen to your heart that you can hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon. When you listen to your mind, you end up working in chemistry labs instead of painting with all the colors of the wind, further evidence that minds are just evil.
The idea is that God is perfect and holy, without sin, and therefore only God can know the truth about right and wrong.
This is what happens when you read the story of Adam and Eve as though it’s a Lewis Carroll poem. You miss out on little details like “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.
But if no man is selfless enough to recognize that which is right and wrong, then man can't generate the concept.
Here’s another concept, Mr. Jones : sociopathy is not infectious, nor is it global. That means that even if you don’t understand the difference between right and wrong, other people just might. Radical, I realize, but if you can swallow Christianity, you can swallow this as well.
Believing that such a Good Being exists, creates in our consciousness the idea of seeking its approval,
In other words, rolling over to present one’s soft underbelly to the alpha male and perhaps piddling on the floor to assure the alpha that we really are terrified of it.
realizing that we can't know right from wrong. We are actually seeking the approval of a personality, or the person of God.
Mr. Jones : I just want a pat on the head from God, though I’d love it if he gave me a gold star or put me on his knee for a cuddle.
I consider the gospels to be accurate and honest documentation, because the logic and nature of men who would knowingly create a false god, would not have included so many ambiguous passages,
So if the gospels were clear and direct, they would have been false. This is called covering your ass so well that you can never find it again, even if you used both hands and all of God’s feeding tendrils.
which could have been misunderstood to indicate that Christ wasn't God. It is man's nature to tell, "I am God." It is divine nature to allow a person to arrive at that truth on their own; "Who do you say I am?"
It is apparently also divine nature to torture that person for all eternity if that person comes to the conclusion that god is Zeus, Shiva, Coyote or Papa Legba.
After I started reading scripture from a new perspective that was generated from my changed self-perception, I found it to be flawless and perfect in the truth it intended to reveal.
The truth it actually revealed was another thing entirely, but luckily for the author, his Calathar Vraxian powers of mind-reading enabled him to decipher the actual meaning behind the ancient human text. Soylent Green was indeed people, and he rushed out to buy vast quantities of this nutrient for his home world.
I simply don't think that written accounts have to be 100% accurate in everything in order to demonstrate the truth for the purpose for which they were written.
What percentage of accuracy should they have? 75%? 50%? 25%? No answer from the supposed scientist?
If the events in question took place 2000 years ago, we shouldn't expect to find a great deal, since written accounts disintegrate along a biodegradable paper trail.
Yes, when god said that with him, all things were possible, he meant “all things except stopping the disintegration of documents on which the souls of billions of people might someday depend”.
This hokey 'god' was going to infringe upon my rights to screw with other consenting adults outside of marriage!
Mr. Jones : How wrong I was about God! When I read the bible with an open mind, I finally realized that the woman didn’t have to be consenting at all, as long as I had marriage in mind, not to mention money in wallet to pay off her pimp – I mean, dad.
It was going to force women to carry their babies to term!
It set a precedent for human-alien hybrids with Mary, leaving the author in no doubt that these extra-terrestrial infants had to be protected (especially towards the end of their feeding cycles when they chewed their way out of the hosts).
I wasn't interested in any TRUTH!
You can’t handle the TRUTH!
If there was even the smallest possibility that truth would interfere with my all out war against Jesus Christ & Company, I did not want to hear it. I wanted to destroy the enemy.
Mr. Jones : I was in this RPG, “Promised Land”, and I was Joshua, 10th-level fighter, with more hit points and charisma than anyone else in my party. The orcish Amalekites came at me in waves, and I slaughtered them all with my wrathogod sword; next up were the evil undead Hittites!
Not many Christians were willing to stoop as low as me,
Their potbellies got in the way?
but when they did, I quickly lost the psychological edge… In light of this, I ask Christians to not be too critical of their brothers or sisters who adopt the 'tit for tat' method of debate.
Mr. Jones : Think of Jesus, who blasted the Roman soldiers to bloody pieces and then pinned the Pharisees to crosses made from thorns… wait a minute, this is my Promised Land manual, not the bible. Sorry, folks. Er, where was I?
It could very well be that they are not speaking out from mean-spiritedness, but from recognizing the need of an even playing field…
And it could very well be that their enjoyment in insulting people is greater than their need to obey their god’s commands. But then again, these poor Christians have so little fun in their existences; how can you deny them the pleasure of slumming with the unsaved?
Sometimes, an arrogant fool needs to be ridiculed and belittled in order to see how ridiculous and obnoxious he is.
In other words, you give your seal of approval to the Nutwatch. Thank you ever so much.
You may find yourself locked in debate with a skeptic and know that there is something about his argument that doesn't fit, despite his references to logic.... Usually, this person is either being stupid or deceitful.
And the rest of the time, he’s being both. So why would you ever want this person to be a Christian? Maybe the stupidity isn’t on the skeptic’s side after all.
Skeptics enjoy asking questions, but they aren't really interested in hearing answers.
Why can’t skeptics just shut up and accept whatever they’re told? The author did that, after all, and it didn’t kill him, did it? No, it placed him exactly where he belonged, groveling before his god and just as vituperative to anyone who didn’t fall into line with his beliefs; fortunately for us all, that suits fundamentalism so much better than it does atheism. Stay right there, Mr. Jones, and don’t ever come back.
Till next week, everyone!
QueenofSwords