27th April 2012, 16:46
Hi All! I'm new here. I wanted to tell you all a little about my journey into non belief.
I was born and raised a Mormon. Dad came from a long line of Mormons, mom converted from southern Baptist so she'd be allowed to marry my dad.
As a child, I remember church being unpleasant. It was long and boring, (3 hours!) and there were lots of words I didn't understand and no one was really interested in explaining anything. I was taught to repeat phrases ( I still can! "I would like to bear my testimony, that I know this church is true, and Joseph Smith is a true prophet...") It was drilled in from a young age.
I was baptized at age 8, because that is the "age of reason". As I got a little older, preteen to teenaged, I started to realize this stuff was not making much sense to me. I got into a full on argument with my Sunday school teacher about why there are no dinosaurs in the bible. (I was told it was because the bible was written about humankind and dinosaurs weren't important to the story.)
Around about the time I turned 14, my parents got divorced. They stopped going to church because divorce is looked down on, but they still forced my sister and I to go. I was an angry teen and just wanted to piss them off...so I would sneak out of church and go smoke pot in the baseball field out back. LOL. I was trying to be bad and rebellious so I started saying things like "God is dead" and listening to Nine Inch Nails and refusing to go to church.
Then my beloved grandpa got into a car accident. My sister called to tell me that he had been in a coma for 2 days, laying in the hospital unidentified because he left his wallet at home. I asked her how they figured out it was grandpa, and she told me that the nurses found his garments and called the church, who sent members down to identify him.
Hold up now. They found his what? My sister said "You know, his temple garments. His underwear. That's how they knew he was Mormon, and called the church." What what!?! 14 years in the church, and I had never heard of these garments. These magic underwear. What the hell? I felt so betrayed. Why the big secret? Why does everything have to be so hush hush?
I decided to do my own research into these "garments" and the founding of the Mormon religion. It didn't take me long to find out why everything was so secretive. It is because that religion is BAT. SHIT. CRAZY. (In my research, I found a great book called Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck. It is a great read and explains so much! I highly recommend it!).
From there I didn't jump straight to atheism, I dallied for a while that I was just anti-organized religion. But the more time that passed and the more reading I did, I had to admit to myself that I just didn't believe in God the way other people did.
I wasn't ready to use the word atheist for a long time. I had believed for so long that atheist really meant evil satan worshipers, and that people really only used the term for shock value.
Then I found The God Delusion and it changed my life. I felt I no longer needed to be ashamed to be an atheist, in fact, I could be proud! Atheist doesn't equal evil! Now I understand it equals someone who thinks about the world around them and doesn't swallow every crazy story they are told. It is really just based upon evidence! It is such a freeing concept!
In 2008, a barn burned down and killed 14 horses. One of them was my beloved thoroughbred, Uno. I was devastated. But my new found rationalism meant I didn't have to blame myself. I didn't have to wonder what I did to make god so mad that he would torture my horse to death. It was so freeing to realize that sometimes shitty shit JUST HAPPENS! Uno didn't die because I did something bad to deserve it. I won't see him again in heaven. That is a tough one for me! I'm sure that is the toughest part for a lot of us. Knowing that our loved ones who are gone are really lost to us forever. But I think it helps us to appreciate the here and now, and remember what is important. Because we really only get one shot at it.
Shitty shit may just happen. But wonderful things happen, too! I'm so glad to be alive in a time when I can express my thoughts and not have to worry about being burned or beheaded for it. I'm so glad for my grandpa's magic underwear that started me on my journey to get here.
![[Image: Uno_Daisy_Chevy014-1.jpg]](http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e294/ImAKoala/Uno_Daisy_Chevy014-1.jpg)
I was born and raised a Mormon. Dad came from a long line of Mormons, mom converted from southern Baptist so she'd be allowed to marry my dad.
As a child, I remember church being unpleasant. It was long and boring, (3 hours!) and there were lots of words I didn't understand and no one was really interested in explaining anything. I was taught to repeat phrases ( I still can! "I would like to bear my testimony, that I know this church is true, and Joseph Smith is a true prophet...") It was drilled in from a young age.
I was baptized at age 8, because that is the "age of reason". As I got a little older, preteen to teenaged, I started to realize this stuff was not making much sense to me. I got into a full on argument with my Sunday school teacher about why there are no dinosaurs in the bible. (I was told it was because the bible was written about humankind and dinosaurs weren't important to the story.)
Around about the time I turned 14, my parents got divorced. They stopped going to church because divorce is looked down on, but they still forced my sister and I to go. I was an angry teen and just wanted to piss them off...so I would sneak out of church and go smoke pot in the baseball field out back. LOL. I was trying to be bad and rebellious so I started saying things like "God is dead" and listening to Nine Inch Nails and refusing to go to church.
Then my beloved grandpa got into a car accident. My sister called to tell me that he had been in a coma for 2 days, laying in the hospital unidentified because he left his wallet at home. I asked her how they figured out it was grandpa, and she told me that the nurses found his garments and called the church, who sent members down to identify him.
Hold up now. They found his what? My sister said "You know, his temple garments. His underwear. That's how they knew he was Mormon, and called the church." What what!?! 14 years in the church, and I had never heard of these garments. These magic underwear. What the hell? I felt so betrayed. Why the big secret? Why does everything have to be so hush hush?
I decided to do my own research into these "garments" and the founding of the Mormon religion. It didn't take me long to find out why everything was so secretive. It is because that religion is BAT. SHIT. CRAZY. (In my research, I found a great book called Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck. It is a great read and explains so much! I highly recommend it!).
From there I didn't jump straight to atheism, I dallied for a while that I was just anti-organized religion. But the more time that passed and the more reading I did, I had to admit to myself that I just didn't believe in God the way other people did.
I wasn't ready to use the word atheist for a long time. I had believed for so long that atheist really meant evil satan worshipers, and that people really only used the term for shock value.
Then I found The God Delusion and it changed my life. I felt I no longer needed to be ashamed to be an atheist, in fact, I could be proud! Atheist doesn't equal evil! Now I understand it equals someone who thinks about the world around them and doesn't swallow every crazy story they are told. It is really just based upon evidence! It is such a freeing concept!
In 2008, a barn burned down and killed 14 horses. One of them was my beloved thoroughbred, Uno. I was devastated. But my new found rationalism meant I didn't have to blame myself. I didn't have to wonder what I did to make god so mad that he would torture my horse to death. It was so freeing to realize that sometimes shitty shit JUST HAPPENS! Uno didn't die because I did something bad to deserve it. I won't see him again in heaven. That is a tough one for me! I'm sure that is the toughest part for a lot of us. Knowing that our loved ones who are gone are really lost to us forever. But I think it helps us to appreciate the here and now, and remember what is important. Because we really only get one shot at it.
Shitty shit may just happen. But wonderful things happen, too! I'm so glad to be alive in a time when I can express my thoughts and not have to worry about being burned or beheaded for it. I'm so glad for my grandpa's magic underwear that started me on my journey to get here.
