Recently my older brother had some sort of domestic dispute with his wife and ended up getting beat up by his step daughters boy friend. In the end he ended up going to jail that night and was charged with 3rd degree assault and disorderly conduct. He is a fundamentalist Pentecostal and the true definition of ignorant fanatic. He like myself in the past is a member of an hispanic church who tend to take christian beliefs to the extreme.
These people seem to be living in the dark ages still and tend to see the influence of Satan in everything and everywhere. They are also what I like to call miracle mongers, they tend to gravitate towards people that can make them "feel" the presence of God or the Holy Spirit. If you demonstrate that you can heal the sick with a touch, cast out demons, prophesy,etc. then you will be highly successful and sought after.
The problem with this is that it tends to promote gullibility, and makes them easy marks for con artists and scammers. Another negative aspect of this sort of belief is that it also fosters hypocrisy and lack of responsibility for ones own actions. My sister is also a member of the same type of Pentecostalism and has been for about 10 years. She claims to receive messages from the Lord and to be guided in her life by his Spirit.
If you would look up the definition for hypocrite in the dictionary you would probably see a picture of my sister. She can talk about holiness and dedication to God etc. but her life does not reflect her beliefs. This is a woman who abandoned all of her kids who are now all grown, discarded her entire family for some female member of the church whom she refers to as her "spiritual mom." Meanwhile her real mom has not heard from her much and she has neglected her as well. She is a glutton, and a poor excuse for a human being. Her own children despise her and now that she needs help from her family again she has returned to find that none of us give a shit about her and are unwilling to help her in any way.
Before she left and gave her life to the Lord she came upon a million dollar settlement for losing her husband to carbon monoxide poisoning in an apartment they shared. She was in a coma for about a week, but when she got her money she moved to the Dominican Republic with her "spiritual mom" and has not been heard from till recently. She has called my house several times and spoken to my wife but I refuse to speak to her. I let her know through my wife that I don't have time for hypocrisy and that I hate hypocrites.
My brother on the other hand told me today that he drank a few wine coolers and lost his head. He then went on about how if you give the devil a chance he would devour you up. I told him the devil did not shove the bottle down your throat that choice you made all on your own. He attributed his latest arrest to Satan's meddling and refuses to take full responsibility for his actions and the consequences that followed.
This is the sort of Christianity that makes me sick to my stomach, but at least I let my family know where I stand. Everyone that knows me knows that I am an atheist and I am very outspoken about my unbelief and my reasons for being this way. Comparing my life now to the way it was when I was a theist I would have to say that I am good without God.
I guess I am just ranting, so if this bothers any of my readers I apologize and hope that you will keep checking back to my blog for more informative information about my experiences as a former fundie and Christian hypocrite lol. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. I hate hypocrisy.
Damn, that sucks. It is interesting just how few of the people in prison are non-believers. As per the hypocrisy it reminds me of how many fundies who are virulently anti-gay end up getting caught with another guy! LOL!
ReplyDeleteSo true Matt, usually the thing they most attack is the thing that they end up getting caught doing. Christians are like the God they worship who tells them not to kill, but its okay when they believe that it is he who is telling them to do it. Where do you draw the line with these psychos?
ReplyDeletePut them all where they finally put Mabus!
ReplyDeleteDid they put Mabus in the nut house??
ReplyDeleteWhat I can't understand is why practically no one stands up against the 2000 year old bull shit, the bible is so fluent in society and none of it can be proven to be true, yet it controls so many people's lives and their very thoughts.
Did the ignorant sheep and goat herders perceive so many people would be influenced by a bunch of written nonsense 2000 years later, I hardly think so.
Steven Bentley,
(can't sign in for some reason...DOH)
Yeah they did. Just google his name - he got arrested and put in for 30 days for an evaluation a couple weeks ago.
ReplyDelete"Put them all finally where they put Mabus".... Religion: re - to tie back to. ligio: origins. Evolution is an explanation of origins just as religion is. Atheism is just as much a 'religious' position as theism, or whatever. Which brings us to the obvious and inevitable fact of the number of people killed in the name of atheism in the 20th century - hundreds of millions. More than in al the previous centuries and all the previous religions or philosophies put together. So..... Little embarassing fact. An elephant in the room moment. All religion kills. Even secular governments kill. Or doesn't the US for example have the death penalty? Does the State have the right to kill? Maybe, maybe not. A political debate? Or does it go deeper, for all of us? Certainly socialist atheist states have all killed once they have attained power, in the millions. And they were anti religious. Which brings us back to the quote at the beginning of my post. When I was growing up inthe sixties, a child could travel alone on a bus from one side of the city to teh other without harm, and we were a pretty religious society. The Biblical mindset was behind the rise of modern Western science. Protestant Christians were cut off from that. And all Christians were and are cut off from the Bible because they have never looked at it for what it was, which requires looked at it from an exclusively Jewish perspective.
ReplyDelete