Jesus Camp, Apostasy Begins

It's about time I retold my apostasy story.  Here's how it all began.

I attended a private Catholic high school. Once per year, in an environment similar to this, we would have “revivals” to enrich our spiritual lives. My senior year was most impressive, as this “Christian Awakening Retreat” was a three-day event. I went to Jesus Camp.

I’d like to share with you my experience at the Christian Awakening Retreat. First, the retreat was shrouded in secrecy. The entire senior class could not all participate at once, so sections went at a time. Although the participants would come back obviously rattled, not one would speak of the activities. All was left to rumor and speculation, which at a high school can produce very imaginative images indeed. The only real evidence that one could see was the Jerusalem Cross everyone wore after going to the retreat. This must be something of great importance. I still have mine. I’ll describe it more later.

One main difference in my retreat and this one was we did not speak in tongues. It was an emotional rollercoaster, though. I remember the first thing we did was sit down at a bunch of tables. A box of Kleenex tissues had been placed on each one. We all felt this was a bit weird. One by one, a letter from our parents was read. Each letter told the child how much his/her parents loved him/her, and how proud they were of their child’s development as a Christian. Each letter left the recipient in tears. Many cried just listening to the outpour of love from these letters. I admit I was moved by my own, for a moment. Later that evening I felt the whole thing had been a bit too orchestrated, but I dismissed this, and looked forward to the next day’s events.

I should point out that one of the main themes of all these retreats was, “You get out of this what you put into it.” I was determined to get the most out of this; after all, participation had cost a few hundred dollars. I really wanted this to get my money’s worth, and I felt this was a great opportunity to ask some of those bugging questions I had about my faith. I went in knowing this was going to make or break me as a Christian. If only I had known how right I was.

The next day was rather uneventful, except for one of my teacher’s story about his son. His son was a few years behind me, but I knew how he was. He was hard to miss. I wasn’t aware of the circumstances of his birth, and his father described it in grueling detail. He had been born with serious defects. At birth, he had no lower jaw, and his face seemed to just disappear beneath his nose. It required numerous surgeries, all performed while he was an infant, just to get him to look human. All these procedures had left him looking a bit different, so you can see why I’d be able to pick him out of a crowd. But I knew he was a good kid, even if we never spoke.

What grabbed me most about this teacher’s story was how the birth of his son threw him for a spiritual loop. He admitted to leaving Catholicism for a while to explore other options. He explained that after looking into other faiths, he found Catholicism to be the best choice for him. This was exactly what I wanted to hear. Someone had taken the journey I was about to begin and had some to the conclusion I thought I wanted. This was very encouraging.

That evening was also an opportunity for Reconciliation, or Confession. For those of you who don’t know, Catholics believe that not only does God have the authority to forgive sins, so too do priests. To have your sins forgiven by a priest is called Reconciliation, or Confession. You tell the priest all your sins, and they are forgiven. Sometimes, a penance is required. This is some prayer or action that you must do to atone for your sins. Something like, “Say five ‘Our Fathers’ and ten ‘Hail Marys’” and you’re golden again. You may know that the priest cannot talk about what you confess. To do so would be a violation of their sacred vows. And we all know how seriously all priests take those vows.

Fresh from the story of how one of my teachers had left the faith only to return, I asked the priest in Confession about some of my problems with faith. The priest told me that these questions came from Satan, and that I should simply pray that God would give me the strength to fight them. Normally, Confession left me with a sense of peace; this time it left me with a sense that I would not be returning to the Confessional. I was right. I never even completed my penance.

On the final evening, we received those Jerusalem Crosses. This is a cross with four smaller crosses in each corner. This cross was worn in the Crusades. It symbolizes the spread of Christianity to the four corners of the earth. My retreat leaders, however, encouraged each of us to find our own meaning for our cross. When I spoke with friends about what meaning they had assigned to their cross, I was stunned to find that without consoling each other, we had all assigned the same meaning: this cross represented me, and all that I am and all I ever will be. I realized that the cross was insignificant. I was already me.

I left the retreat knowing this was to be the last big Christian thing I would ever do. I think even my parents understood this. When everyone else ran bawling to their parents, I kept thinking, “But parents are SUPPOSED to love their kids. This shouldn’t be some great revelation. Why is everyone acting like this has changed something?” Clearly, I “didn’t get it”.

Today, I look back on this Christian Awakening Retreat as a truly awakening retreat. It was here that I realized I would never accept this faith as my own. So while Jesus Camp is revolting, keep in mind that I went there, and began revolting.

Faith, Reason, and other mutually exclusive terms

It never ceases to amaze me how much believers want to convince me that they are not “blind followers”, that they have come to their religious beliefs through reason, just like me. No, I’m not going to refute the claim that atheism is a religion here. That will have to be another blog. What I want to address here is that people want me to believe that they have used reason, not “blind faith”, to come to religion. They say that they use logic and find Christ.

Now, I should start by defining my terms. Faith is believing in something without evidence, or in spite of contrasting evidence. If you have evidence, there is no need for faith. No faith is required to believe that if I drop a rock, it will fall. There is evidence that suggests a very reasonable expectation that the rock should fall. If, however, in the unlikely event the rock does NOT fall, that does not mean gravity is no longer valid. Further investigation is required to discover what caused the expected outcome to differ from the actual outcome. Faith requires no evidence. Again, if there is evidence, there is no room for faith. If faith only exists without evidence, then it is unreasonable. It is not reasonable to think that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow. There is no evidence that would support such a claim. In fact, there is good evidence to suggest otherwise. To say that the belief is based on faith does not make the claim more rational. It simply states why someone would have chosen to believe it.

Invariably, if I ask a believer why they think there is evidence to support the belief in god or gods, they fall to the usual arguments: the first-cause, the cosmological, and the argument from complexity, etc. They seem unaware these have been refuted over and over again. This is what they consider to be evidence. But if I press further, none of these are actually the reason they believe. They are reasons they still believe after having questioned their faith in the past. That is why they say they have come to faith from reason. They questioned faith at one point, learned of these arguments, and were satisfied with the answers provided. Some, most even, seem surprised the arguments have been refuted ever.

When I go over the standard rebuttals to their standard arguments, they go back to faith. This is where they like to attack me. A few have realized mid-step the circular nature of this, and stopped. But a few have actually stopped to think about why these arguments fail. They go back to faith anyway, but at that point I feel like I’ve succeeded.

There is no virtue in faith, and even the believer recognizes this. If they really thought faith WAS a virtue, they would not try to defend faith with reason. They would not try to use science to “prove” design. They would not try to “prove” jesus actually walked the earth or did anything reported in the bible. They’d just admit it’s all blind faith. But that makes them sound unreasonable, even to themselves. So they further delude themselves into thinking there are reasons to believe.

Those are two more mutually exclusive terms: virtuous faith.

An atheist’s profession of faith

An atheist’s profession of faith


Someone once asked what I did believe in if I did not believe in god.  This was my response.

I believe in freedom. I believe that choice is the backbone of freedom. As choice expands, so does freedom; as choice contracts, so does freedom. I believe the freedoms granted to Americans in the Constitution are awesome.



I believe in liberty, justice and equality for all. I believe these belong to everyone regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or sexual orientation. I believe that denying persons rights and liberties based on any of these is a slap in the face of liberty.



I believe adults should be able to make decisions about what does and does not go into their own bodies. I believe adults should be able to decide who they will and will not have for sexual partners. I believe laws governing what adults consume and the reasons they chose to have sex are wrong.



I believe consenting adults should be able to marry other consenting adults.



I believe love, not blood, makes a family.



I believe my family is the source of my joy, happiness and fulfillment.



I believe in fidelity.



I believe children have rights, and parents should enforce and protect those rights. I believe parents who do not do this should not be parents. I believe in coerced sterilization for such failed parents.



I believe people have the right to live as they see fit, so long as they harm none.



I believe people have the right to die as they see fit, so long as they harm none.



I believe it is the prerogative and duty of youth to carefully analyze and evaluate the institutions of the elderly.



I believe in honesty.



I believe “animal rights” is an oxymoron.



I believe the wisdom I have today will not be sufficient to solve tomorrow’s problems. If I am to meet the challenges of tomorrow, I must grow and expand my wisdom, or watch it stagnate and fail.



I believe I could be wrong.



I believe I may be right.



I believe I earn every dollar I make.



I believe the difference between love, lust and infatuation is hindsight.



I believe in education. I believe in comprehensive sex education for teens, and age-appropriate health education for younger children. I believe abstinence is cruel, dangerous, and unhealthy.



I believe science should be taught in the science class; history should be taught in the history class, etc. I believe much can be learned from studying the world’s religions in a religion class, but NOT the science class.



I believe yesterday offers experience, tomorrow offers hope, and today is all that is.



I believe in compassion.



I believe in kindness.



I believe in forgiveness.



I believe it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.



I believe the meaning of life can be found in a combination of mastication, meditation, and masturbation.



I believe it is the duty and responsibility of each individual to create, follow and modify a personal code of ethics. I believe the goal of this code should be to become more moral today than you were yesterday. I believe this can only happen when we are honest with each other and ourselves in regards to our successes and our failures.



I believe in you.



I believe in me.



I believe there is no god; no omniscient, omnipotent being that watches us. I believe waiting and praying for miracles is a waste of time. I believe if we dislike what we see in the world, it is our charge to make change happen.



I believe god isn’t here; we are.

Drink some of this, Believer! Be one of US!

Drink some of this, believer! Be one of US!




The recent PEW survey and my re-posting of my Finding My Religion blog got me thinking about the cocktail of faiths I had before giving up religion. There is a quote from someone more famous than I that claims everyone is an atheist in regards to some god or deity; atheists simply reject one more. The statement goes on to claim if one understands why they do not believe in Zeus or Odin, they will better understand why the atheist also rejects the existence of their god. I think this is true, to a degree, and that is the subject of this blog.



I’m starting a student group of non-believers at the college I currently attend. We held our first un-official meeting about a week ago. There, it was obvious that of all the members, my journey to apostasy was the most turbulent, and my indoctrination was the fiercest. The most turbulence came from looking at other religions and trying to get my ethics to fit in the religion’s box.



Perhaps because I was so indoctrinated, I had to look to other religions in order to break free. Whatever the case, I certainly did. In doing so, lots of commonalities arose. Every religion I looked at wanted me to employ faith. I had to simply accept some tenant of the religion without any evidence to support the claim. It really struck me that the parts of the religion I tended to discard were those that had no supporting evidence. The only redeeming quality in any of them was a moral code and a philosophy of good will. I already had that. I was looking for a reliable, reasonable belief system.



Since all the faith-based portions of the religions were easily discarded, I figured I’d just make some up myself. Thus me-ism began. It would seem I’d make a horrible religion-starter. I kept trying to re-make my faith so that it would match what I observed in reality. The more I did so, the less faith made any sense. But the morality seemed to remain constant. So the question became, how do I make sense of morality without god?



When I got to Satanism, I found this easier. Satanism stressed the individual more than any other faith I had found. I suppose I should explain that by this time, I had become convinced that god was imaginary, and Satanism was not devil-worship. At least, not for me. I call it faith, however, because Satanism had a large “magical” component. There was “black magic”, for example. There were rituals and spells, many similar to those I had picked up in Wicca. In other words, there forces out there one cannot possibly understand. It took me a long time to see the bullshit here.



But morality was simple in Satanism. Do what feels good. I enjoy doing the right thing, so here, in Satanism, I forged the idea that morality MUST be organic. I had to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate my moral code to be sure I was as moral as I could be. I hold this philosophy today.



Since the PEW report, it does seem the atheist knows more about other faiths than the faithful. I know when I began my investigation into other faiths, I did so only because I had heard a teacher of mine tell his story of doing the same, and returning to Catholicism. That was the path I thought I wanted to take, and he said it was possible. The atheist needs to at least hear the claim so the claim can be rejected. It’s hard to do that when you are conditioned to cover your ears whenever a claim from another religion is recited.



Perhaps the elixir of atheism is a bit of each of the world’s religions mixed altogether. Perhaps this bitter drink is enough to induce faith-vomiting. Perhaps this is why every atheist I know supports a world-religion class in schools. If we followed NBC’s star, would the slogan have read, “The More You Know….The More Likely You Are To Apostatize” ?



Or perhaps the elixir is nothing more than education. There is no better way to dissolve delusion, than with education. So, drink, believer. Be one of us. God isn’t here; we are.