This morning I woke up with an old song in my head — “Thankful” by Caedmon’s Call, written by Derek Webb. It was an old favorite of mine when I was a young self-righteous Calvinist. The music is fun and the lyrics talked about one of my favorite doctrines: Total Depravity.
Here are some of the lyrics:
Cause no, there is none righteous
Not one who understands
There is none who seek God
No not one, I said no not oneSo I am thankful that I’m incapable
Of doing any good on my own‘Cause we’re all stillborn and dead in our transgressions
We’re shackled up to the sin we hold so dear
So what part can I play in the work of redemption
I can’t refuse, I cannot add a thing‘Cause I am just like Lazarus and I can hear your voice
I stand and rub my eyes and walk to You
Because I have no choice
Like most Calvinists, I struggled with the whole idea that people were incapable of doing good on their own, because I saw it all around me. But there were theological explanations — like unbelievers only seemed to do good things, but were actually just self-serving. And since they hated God, how could they really do anything good?
Like a good follower, I squashed my doubts and embraced the philosophy with fervor.
But looking back, it seems like such a strange thing to believe — that everyone hates God, that people can do no good on their own, that apart from God zapping people they would never choose to be a Christian. But there were verses that taught those things (as well as contradictory things, but were explained away), so I believed them.
Today, I’m thankful I no longer believe such repulsive and demoralizing things.
This guy’s voice makes me want to stick glass shards in my ears to stop the bleeding.
“So I am thankful that I’m incapable
Of doing any good on my own”
Everybody had better hope that isn’t true – of the hundreds of nurses I’ve worked with, less than ten percent have expressed any belief in God or an afterlife. Most of us seem to be atheists – and I can’t help thinking that caring for people when they’re at their most vulnerable and, you know, preventing them from dying – Well, that seems to be pretty good to me.
Wow, talking about cultish ramblings. “I’m incapable of doing any good on my own” isn’t that giving license for someone else to tell you what to do? I’m thankful I never was religious cause reading about religion especially calvinism is straight up spooky!
Reading on the wiki of Total Depravity, and I claim total lack of knowledge in scripture, so Jesus’ atonement for sins on the cross and drinking of the bitter cup was only for an elect few? Wouldn’t a reasonable person say that’s kind of stupid that only certain people were chosen and others not that a reasonable person would view God as a segregationist? And what’s up with the idea of people not being able to do do good on their own? They’re lots of people and orginizations that prove otherwise. Someone who has that viewpoint most have a crappy life because witnessing all the good people do that person most come to a realization that if their God doesn’t except the good and effort of these people He must be a total douschebag!
This is good and just because god said so and the reason people like you and me can’t understand it is because we are lowly and unworthy maggots who should just do what we’re told. We are not fit to judge god and should just hope we are among the chosen few or thank our loving lord as he burn us for ever.
Have to go and vomit now
I sang this song several times as an offertory at my church. And I believed every word of it. Hearing the song again was like déjà vu of a distant dream/nightmare.
It has been just over a year since I walked away from Christianity, but it seems like a lifetime ago. Life devoid of ancient superstition is a true reason to be Thankful. And miraculously I am still very capable of doing good on my own.
“There is NONE who seek God
No not one, I said no not one”
Who is telling lies, christians or “god”?
Wowza. This is astoundingly horrible to listen too from this side of the faith. I struggled agaist Calvinism for a long time and certainly silliness like this, but the teachings in the Bible from this perspective are pretty overwhelming. I’m thankful, as BeAttitude is, that I don’t have to buy in to it anymore. I can certainly see how people get trapped in this decadent religion.
Wow does this ever take me back. I had completely forgotten about this group. I first heard Caedmon’s Call back in ’97 when I was a freshman at a conservative christian university and they played at a chapel service (weekly chapel attendance being mandatory for all students). I remember really really liking them at the time, particularly the #2 track on the “Caedmon’s Call” album, “Close of Autumn”. How things do change.
I have never understood how Calvinist can believe as they do but then turn around saying that it is me that is sinning against their version of god. Am I correct in my understanding of them? I thought that they believed all our actions are directed by god no matter what it might be.
If it’s God that decides everything people do, then when people “sin”, isn’t it actually God that’s sinning?
Wow. I actually listened to “Not This Land” by CC over and over when I was coming out of Christianity. I listen to it every now and then cuz it is kinda catchy. So it makes me wonder: How many ex-Christians still have their old “Christ is Cool” music? I still have a few albums…but I’m thinking Ebay may be coming soon.
Most of it is kinda catchy, but so many of it just oozes how unworthy I am as a human…just can’t listen to it any more. Too depressing.
I guess we should never underestimate the ability of religion to denigrate humanity. Calvinism especially so.
Wow! If I grew up on that stuff I would be an atheist by now, too. How sad. I find it shocking what parents have their kids growing up believing. Time and again every Christian-turned-atheist I meet has had some horrible experience like this. No wonder you all turn to atheism. With a doctrine like that, I would too.
Yikes
First, I didn’t grow up believing it. Second, I didn’t believe it until many years after I became a Christian, after I started becoming more intellectual (irony!). Third, this had nothing to do with why I turned to atheism.
I wasn’t implying it was THE reason you turned. I’m saying if *I* had been faced with that doctrine or listened to songs like that *I* would have run for my life
You said, “No wonder you all turn to atheism. With a doctrine like that, I would too.”
Dino, if you give any authority to the Bible, you *were* faced with that doctrine.
John 9:31,33
“We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
John 15:5
“Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
Luke 1:37
“Nothing is impossible with God.”
You know, it’s possible to be an atheist without having been through some traumatizing experience. You seem to suggest that most of us turn to atheism as some sort of compensation for religious abuse done to us. That’s simplistic and offensive.
I’m going to do an article on christian-turned-atheist demographics soon. I get the funny feeling the vast majority are going to be people who either OD’d on religion as a kid (and vomited it up as an adult), and/or came from an evangelical or Calvinist background. Rarely do I meet atheist converts who came from Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, or Mormon backgrounds.
I will post a survey soon and I hope I can get a lot of participation. Will be interesting to see if my hypothesis proves true.
I know many people in all those backgrounds who have become atheists. But online surveys, of course, are quite biased and so our are perceptions.
I can only comment from my own experience and those of other professed atheists I know, but all bar one (Jesuit private school) have come from a mild Anglican background. Faced with the prospect of my confirmation looming on the horizon, I did some reading around the subject and came to the same conclusion that I had reached about Santa 5 years earlier. My parents had the sense not to push the point too hard. I never vomited on religion as a kid – it took a more mature appreciation of the horrendous consequences of these absurd beliefs to make me sick to the stomach.
Dino –
Me, me. I grew up moderate typical Catholic (went to Catholic schools and always went to church, but didn’t talk about religion much other than that). I had neither of the experiences you described. I had no trauma with religion, and was very devout and involved in the youth group. As an adult I started asking questions to make sense of it – I forget what started it. It all fell apart over 10 years or so. Most of the people I personally know who are not people of faith are the same.
I think your perception is skewed because we don’t speak up much. If I don’t care about my religion I certainly don’t care about yours and I won’t bring it up in conversation. There is no point in responding to “God bless you” with “If there was a God!” when it will only upset people and I don’t care. I only care about the faith of others if it impacted my life – if someone told me I shouldn’t consider an abortion or shouldn’t teach my kids science because God says so, then they would hear my opinion of God.
There may be people you know with no active faith, but they don’t bother to bring it up. If you try to talk to those around you about it, practice being very non-judgemental. We don’t bring it up because the response is usually anger and offense, no matter how mildly we say it, because the very existance of non-believers is offensive, or an attempt to convert us and tell us how we are wrong. I know I shut up at the first hint, not because of lack of conviction about my belief system but because, really, why argue and get upset over something imaginary that I don’t care about? I don’t get in arguments about Santa either.
There are some nuances to this, too, that you might not be aware of if you are new to the conversation about atheism.
“Do you believe in God?” is not a sufficient question. “Do you believe in God as described in the Bible and accepted by most Christians?” No. First of all, to me, believe means to accept as true based on evidence and because it answers questions about what we observe. There is little real evidence for God, just assertions and emotional appeals. The evidence that is presented is more easily explained by other phenomena. I can’t prove there is no God, of course, any more than you can prove there are no unicorns, but if you say rainbows and a feeling of being loved are proof, then I can give you an explanation of optics and brain chemistry. The same as if I said that the piles of dirt in the yard and short grass is proof of unicorns, and you would tell me about moles and lawn mowers.
A different question is “Do you believe there are higher beings or intelligences that we can’t percieve that are aware of us and who influence us in ways we cannot directly perceive?” No, but there is no evidence either way. I can’t prove there isn’t, but there is no claimed evidence to falsify or verify. And if there was – who cares? If we can’t perceive him, why do we not only care that he’s there but spend our life and resources trying to do what he wants?
So if you do your survey, you might want to include an answer like, “No, but who cares and why are we talking about this again?” or “It doesn’t matter if there is or not.” I would count those as atheist, wouldn’t you?
I wouldn’t say that people always convert or deconvert based on bad experiences with religion. I’d add to your survey some questions about where the people lived throughout their lives. For example, if people moved away from home, were they more likely to question their religious beliefs? Did they meet people of other faiths, which persuaded them to learn more about other religions? Did they move from rural areas to more populated areas, and does that correlate to their athiesm? Or conversely, did they switch religions to better fit in with their new home?
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=104326&start=0
What religion did you formerly believe in?
Poll runs till Mon Jan 18, 2010 9:37 am
You may select 1 option
Catholic
20
31%
Protestant(Any Form)
18
28%
Orthodox Christian
4
6%
Mormon
3
5%
Sunni Muslim
5
8%
Shiite Muslim
0
No votes
Eastern Philosophy(Any Kind)
5
8%
Other
10
15%
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=100675&start=0
Which option best describes your religious background?
You may select 1 option
Atheist or Agnostic since you knew what the words meant or so little theistic involvement it made no practical difference to your behaviour.
122
44%
Ex Catholic
46
17%
Ex Jehovah Witness
9
3%
Ex Other Christian denomination
75
27%
Ex Practising Jew
3
1%
Ex Muslim
12
4%
Ex Theistic Buddhist
1
0%
Ex Theistic Hindu
2
1%
Ex Sikh
1
0%
Ex Theist not described above
4
1%
*raises hand*
Hi. Atheist. Never, ever believed – not for lack of trying. I did try. I went to church, I prayed, I tried so very hard to believe – but I couldn’t summon the necessary faith. I felt silly praying (talking to myself, much?), I never believed “miracles” (that never looked all that miraculous), I was never moved by the holy book (bored me to tears). I never managed to put my trust in the great invisible.
I don’t really know why. Mother is a believer, quite a lot, but she was never fanatic; she is Christian, believes in Jesus, reads the Bible, goes to church, but she isn’t the type to think everyone else is automatically damned. she raised me as a believer, but not as a mindless sheep kind of believer.
It might be because I read a lot, and have always been curious; because I love mythology; because, as I was basically born with a painful, crippling, incurable illness, I was exposed from very early to suffering, especially in children, and that seemed (still does) incompatible with a personal, loving god (who didn’t seem to heal or did so at random). Lots of ill people seem to turn to religion for comfort and hope; I suppose my illness turned me away from it (not because I’m angry at god; it is silly to be angry at something I don’t believe exists).
It might be because I love mythology, and read extensively about it even as a child. Why should I believe Jesus and not Artemis? At least Artemis isn’t supposed to perform miracles or grant wishes, as Jesus seems to.
It might be because I love biology and the intricacies of it; creation by god was never even a possibility in my mind. Perhaps creation followed by evolution, but creationism/intelligent design was never even a possibility. It’s kinda hard to be awed by the human body when you’re exposed, daily, to several different ways in which it can go wrong, I suppose.
It might be because I grew up pretty much alone, among books, and among those there was plenty of Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, among others.
It might be because I grew in a veritable melting pot of cultures, and while almost everyone I know and knew believes in god, which religion they follow is different – sometimes even more than one at once.
But see, with all that; I can’t remember a time when I did believe, truly. I never got the fuzzy feeling, the emotional breakdown, things people of faith claim to feel; the sureness, the truthiness, never seemed to reach me. No experience, no great moment of revelation.
I can’t convince myself that there’s someone or something out there (or inside, in JC’s case) watching for me, some ideal I must reach or follow. Then one day I stopped pretending to be something I wasn’t – that’s when I gave up running after faith and just accepted myself as an atheist. I am happier for it. Feels nice, not having to lie to myself.
Wow, that freeze frame “Because I have no choice” is spooky. That’s the reason I’m an atheist and not a theist. I always have a choice, if I come to a point that I ever feel I have no choice that’ll be the day that someone else will make the choice for me and it won’t be in my best interests but theirs.
I wonder if people leave religion because they are upset with God and what he stands for or with the religion itself. I’d always like to think that many Christians set themselves up for failure when they claim this and that about their Bible — the Bible in inerrant, God is perfect, God is not evil etc. Things get worse when they start proclaiming that they’re different from everyone else.
Like you Daniel, I’ve begun my own search for truth, having been raised in a religious background. My mom is a devoted believer. While I’m still afar off from coming to my own conclusion, I realise that faith is a concept that is more malleable than we’d like to think, and so is our idea about God. Of course, I think you will probably say that God is merely a mental projection of our values or ideals, or that of others.
As for me, I don’t quite see atheism as my eventual destination. Mainly because that position is just as clueless as a belief in some sort of deity: We just don’t seem to have enough knowledge to come to that conclusion.
Terence – atheism is a term that gets spread too wide imo. While I would describe myself as a-theist – even anti-theist – when we talk about the Abrahamic god, I am not a-deist and find the ideas of World Pantheism sit quite comfortably. Is it ‘clueless’ to deny the possibility of some kind of creative force in the Universe? Quite possibly. Is it ‘clueless’ to point out the dangerous absurdities inherent in the Judeo-Christian tradition? Absolutely not.
I realise that too. Perhaps one can spread atheism along a continuum from hard atheism to soft atheism, with soft atheism being lumped together with agnosticism. By “clueless” I refer to the large gaps of knowledge that still remain despite advances in science, which I suspect will be the state of affairs for a long time to come. Certainly, there are some things that can be pointed out with some objectivity, and as you mentioned certain Judeo-Christian traditions are one of them.
Clueless? Hardly. We know the Universe exists. We’ve discovered its laws and worked out how it started and how it formed and how we got here, all through careful study, experimentation, collaboration, and not being afraid to admit that we were wrong and change our models.
Religion on the other hand, has no supporting evidence what-so-ever. None. Nada, zip, zilch, zero. Lots of art, lots of philosophy, and lots of personal anecdotes from believers, but no evidence. It also has a great number of prophets, messiahs, chosen people, and gods in human form claiming they know the truth.
So while you say that there may be “gaps” of knowledge at present, they get smaller year-by-year. We continually discover new things. However none of them point to anything supernatural, simply more and more interesting natural properties and quirks of how it all works.
Religion on the other hand, is nothing BUT a giant gap. Every religion claims to have the truth but when you go down the rabbit hole deep enough, you find that there’s nothing real on the bottom. Just some old tribal myths and beliefs wrapped up in the local cultures of the area, that have mutated and shifted and smushed into each other over the centuries, but no actual piece of archeological or scientific evidence for any its claims.
So until a religion, ANY religion* offers me evidence**, I will continue to assume that no gods exists.
* I’m not limited to the big-3 Abrahamic faiths here, I request this evidence from Hinduism, Buddhism and any other -ism you can come up with.
** Note, I don’t want “proof”, just evidence. I wouldn’t believe right away of course, but if the evidence was examined and found to be authentic, I’d start to change my mind.