If the prophet had asked me to die for god, would I have done it?

After writing a post last night about some of my thoughts on 9/11 I read some other blog posts that covered the same topic. 10 years later and we are all keenly aware of the significance of the event. However, I think that there are some crucial lessons that still need to be emphasised.

The terrorists acted because of their religious beliefs. Their belief in god and paradise drove them to murder. Throughout history there are many examples of religious fanaticism resulting in the torture and murder of innocent people. To be an atheist has been something that people have necessarily had to keep quiet in order to survive. Today, we can speak out but many still choose to privately disbelieve because there is still plenty of hatred out there. Hatred for opposing religions and hatred for the non-religious.

Would I have been burned as a witch in days gone by? stretched on the rack? been skinned alive? these things and more have been done to brave people who have dared to question religious authority. It may now be relatively safer to be an infidel, at least here in Australia it is, but now we are told to "stay out of it", to "respect faith", to "leave religion alone". All because the questions that we ask are tough. They require people to think for themselves, to step outside of where they feel safe and to take responsibility for their words and actions.

Today I watched some excerpts from September Dawn , a movie based on the events of September 11th 1857 otherwise known as the 'Mountain Meadows Massacre'. A group of Mormon militiamen and members of the Paiute tribe attacked a wagon train of emigrants murdering around 120 men, women, and children. Some of the scenes in the movie, although dramatised of course, portray elements of Mormonism with which I am familiar from my 31 years lived as an active Mormon. I felt sick as I watched men and women participate in temple ceremonies with the awful monotone that I heard many times myself. It always bothered me how dead we all sounded. Now I cannot believe that I was a part of something so ridiculous and so dangerous. What would I have done for the church, for god? how far would I have gone. 


Would I have married the prophet if he told me god willed it? would my husband have let me go? would I have cried out for blood atonement? would I have acquiesced to having my throat slit and my guts spilled for having revealed the things that I have revealed here on my blog?


Would I have been willing to kill for god?


I can only say that somehow I broke out of the trance. I am out now. I am not controlled by superstition or the greed and power of corrupt men. I am free from these lies and horrors but I am still faced with the belief of others every day. If your faith in any way requires you to relinquish your own mind, if it asks you to blindly obey... then ask yourself - "what would I be willing to do for god?" the answer might scare you. It scares the hell out of me. 


I worry about putting all of this into words. Will it just incite more anger? I hope that everyone who reads this post will hear me when I say that all I want is for everyone on this planet to have the freedom to live their own life in the manner that they wish to live it (so long as you harm no-one), with no-one claiming any right or special powers/knowledge from any god/s. We all know deep down that no-one has any such authority. People continue to assert that they have the truth and that everyone else is wrong. How can every religion be the only true one?? Isn't it far more likely that NONE of them are. 


The only way that I can see for humankind to survive is if we act from love. When we see 'the other' we see ourselves, we see our own son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, father... and we love them and we work for a world that can sustain everyone in peace and happiness. It is possible. We have everything we need to do it BUT we must shed old superstitions and face reality. We must grow up. 

I'm Still Here

I was 3 months pregnant with my first child when the towers came down. I had lost about 5kg due to "morning" sickness (this should be re-named "every minute of every freaking day" sickness) and was feeling pretty rancid but relatively happy as we were visiting friends for the evening. Our host got a call from his brother who told him to turn the TV on,  NOW! We tuned in before the second plane hit and I remember such a mixture of feelings as we watched it happen. Nothing else existed. The same scenes played over and over for hours.

I thought about the little bean growing in my belly and wondered what kind of a world would be waiting for them. I felt scared. I felt vulnerable. I thought this was the beginning of the 'end of days' and I was going to be the pregnant woman left behind in the muck; or the depleted new mother with a fledgling human to protect. How would I be able to run? to hide? to survive? and protect a baby?!

10 years on and I have a healthy and happy 9 year old girl and 7 year old boy. Life continues to assert itself all around me. The world did change after 9/11 but not in the devastating way I thought it would. And 2 years ago I woke up and saw the world and life in a very new light. The only 'end of days' I now worry about is one that we, the human race, might bring upon ourselves. Through neglecting and ravaging our environment or maybe thermo-nuclear war as a result of unrestrained greed and power. There will be no 'second coming' but there are plenty of religious extremists willing and eager to bring our world a very real  Armageddon. They will it on, they want it to happen soon! Because they don't care about this life; they want the next life ... paradise ... but there is none. There are people in this world, from all kinds of religions, who are willing the 'end of days' upon us. This MUST change.

The social nicety of respecting Religion needs to end. If something cannot withstand investigation then it ought not to be blindly revered and funded with our tax dollars and fed to our kids. It is a poison. Humankind has the capacity to love and to live harmoniously WITHOUT religion.


Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one 



-- John Lennon Imagine


I have just come back from a women's full-moon celebration with my daughter. There were about 20 of us at a friends house. We sat around a fire and shared our thoughts and feelings. We danced. We sang. We ate. We laughed. We hugged. We connected.

I feel renewed by the love of these women.

Thank you to the amazing woman who organised this night for us. We need these sorts of gatherings and opportunities to love and to share.  Let's heal our own hearts so that we can reach out in love. I send my LOVE out to all of you tonight.

Down the Rabbit Hole

You know that post last night about trolling on Mormon facebook pages? This morning I woke up to find a string of comments from one of those pages which appears to be a substantial effort to try and (re)convert me.

It began about 3 weeks ago and I thought we were done but apparently WE are not done.  At first my evangelist berated me for having a negative view of the BOM. Then we had a misunderstanding where I thought they were comparing homosexuals to pedophiles. They said "And I ask you, "Do you love everyone the way they are? Even the rapists and pedophiles; serial killers and wife beaters? Because you just said that they were born that way."You see why I was alarmed right? The phrase of mine that triggered this statement was that I had said that any god I could believe in would love everyone as they are. What my evangelist keeps failing to understand is how incredibly insulting and tiring it is to hear homosexuals lumped in with pedophiles and rapists! Why do people immediately feel the need to go there? what is the link? The link in their head is SIN, they lump all of these things together as sins and completely fail to realise that they are being unbelievably cruel and bigoted  in their approach. Not to mention that they are just plain wrong! There is no sin in LOVE. The LGBTQI community teaches me daily about love.   


After clarifying that my 'born that way' statement was in relation to the LGBTQI community (doesn't anyone listen to Gaga anymore!) my evangelist went on to repeat themselves. "So, I'll rephrase. "Do you love everyone the way they are? Heterosexual or Homosexual? Rapist or not? Pedophile or not? Tax cheaters or not? Liars or not? Thieves or not? Animal abusers or not? Drug abusers or not?" It would appear that you think He should love EVERY PERSON as they are because they are born that way." Gah!  There are only 2 behaviours in there that don't harm another person and they are homosexuality and drug abuse. The rest impact upon others ranging from mild to severe in impact. You could argue that drug abusers hurt those close to them too BUT who are homosexual people hurting? the insecure and sexually repressed religious knobs? is that who? pfffft! give it a rest!


We then got into why I lost my belief in god. Which goes something like this:
"I was born into the church. I have read the BOM many times and the Bible, PoGP, D&C, 4 years seminary, 4+ years Institute, Gospel Essentials teacher, Young Womens Counsellor, Relief Society Counsellor. Then at age 31 I was reading Jacob2 (again) and this time didn't gloss over the mention of polygamy, referrenced it to D&C 132 and read it with a desire to understand. The ultimatum to Emma - 'accept polygamy or be destroyed' I "likened unto myself" and found no love from god. I realised I was a piece of property to him and worth less than my husband. I still believed in the church at this point and so I felt spriritually devastated by this new awareness of my place in gods plan. I spent the next year trying to find explanations that would show me I was wrong. Instead I found more and more damning evidence that the church is a fraud concocted by Joseph Smith etc. I have made my peace with Joseph. I love my Mormon friends but I 
despise Mormonism."


My evangelist friend then goes on to tell me about a bunch of women in the scriptures. Eve. Mary. Evangelist even quotes from the BOM "The Lamanite king Lamoni also bore testimony that his Redeemer was to be “born of a woman.”"Is that supposed to make me feel better?!!! that a woman was mentioned in scriptures as a baby maker! "Sarah, wife of Abraham, is mentioned only in passing as “she that bare you.” I think evangelist has forgotten whose point they are trying to prove! "Sariah, was the helpmate of the visionary Lehi and mother of the eight or so sons and daughters" Fuck me! helpmate (helpmeet?) and mother of 8, NO thanks! "
The unnamed wife of Nephi" Nameless, faceless, hopeless! To be fair, unnamed wife of Nephi did a pretty cool thing - "However, she does present a good example of a distraught woman turning to prayer when her husband’s life was endangered (as I'm sure a man would do if his wife was in danger). “With her tears and prayers” and in spite of threatenings, she tried to persuade the rebellious brethren to release her bound husband. (See 1 Ne. 18:19.) " Evangelist then makes mention of a maidservant who was beaten and then fled to the other side (the righteous side) and gave the baddies away. Evangelist sums it up with mention of the groups of  women mentioned in the BOM - sisters of Nephi, daughters of Ishmael, Lamanite daughters. 

Then this comment - "I guess you've forgotten that there are women in the Book of Mormon; good and bad, just like the men." No, but thanks for proving my point; that all of the heroes in the BOM are men. The women exist and are mentioned as some appendage to a man or men. As I've said before - Blech! 

Perhaps most insulting of all was the response to my earnest account of my feelings of pain etc upon discovering that Emma (and I) would be destroyed by god if we would not accept polygamy. Evangelist's response was to say that Joseph himself was threatened with destruction from god if he showed the golden plates to anyone (conveniently fixing the problem of people asking for proof of the plates) and again with destruction if HE would not institute polygamy. God! what a trial! having sex with pretty young (already married) women. Gag me with a mother-fucking spoon! 

Trolling for god

I may or may not be guilty of trolling around some Mormon facebook pages, pretending to have been invited to their event and getting involved in some scuffles over mass invites and censorship.

Evidence FOR...

More evidence FOR...

Evidence AGAINST...

......................

...........

...........................

Ok, ok, so that looks pretty guilty then. 

It was my first time trolling and I kinda liked it. 

Troll. Troll. Troll. Trolllllllllll. 

I heard about these pages through some ex-Mo fb groups and thought I'd check them out. There were some stellar comments by Mormon BOM readers in response to our trolling but I didn't take screen shots and they are now lost in the depths of those Walls. 

Here is a comment by a Mormon BOM reader:

The BOM reading page tended to hover around 40% success rate in inviting people that then accepted the invitation; with about 55% not responding and 11% rejecting it).  

The 'Flooding' page had a 15% success rate (I have my suspicions about the style of flooding that was carried out by the two 'Elders' pictured left); with 74% not responding and about 7% rejecting it. 

I didn't start taking screen shots till most of the fun was over (I'll be more onto it next time). There was a lot of censoring going on yet there was nothing worth censoring. A decent number of people (not me, I was a faker) were legitimately voicing their 'no' response on the Wall in a respectful way, particularly when they had been invited more than once, by member friends. These posts were all removed. Eventually the creator listened to the numerous complaints about 'mass invitations' and allowed the comments to remain in order (I hope) to give the attendees pause to think about who they invite. 

The censorship of commenters who were respectfully declining was not entirely surprising to me but it did get me thinking of the compatibility of Mormonism and Facebook. Facebook can get ugly and even when it is clean it is still a VERY open place. If someone is annoyed about being invited multiple times (by their own Mormon friends) to a religious event that they do not respect, then they may want to say something about it. I think that people ought to be able to say how they feel about such invites and those doing the inviting ought to be able to listen. Many attendees said that the 'non-attenders' ought to just ignore the invite and get on with their lives. I think that this attitude from evangelists is rude. If you are going to insinuate that you have 'the truth' and you want to 'save people' then you ought to at least give those people a voice in response. 

Reality

My daughter's class received some hard news today. One of the girls was not at school... because her mother died this morning. She had been diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks ago and now she is dead.

 "If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. The difference made will almost certainly be more than you have calculated." 
Christopher Hitchens Hitch-22

"Do not aspire to immortal life but exhaust the limits of the possible" 
Pindar Pithian III

Go hug someone. Now.

Camp Quest and the Invisible Unicorns

 

I don't know why I was worried about my kids missing out on the Mormon Youth Programs since I never really enjoyed them much myself. I'm not gonna say I hated the Youth Programs entirely but there wasn't much I liked about them. I liked some of the leaders and I like some of the youth. I rarely liked the activities; I mean how many times can you bake chocolate chip cookies or write down your goals for future wifehood, blech!

So I was pretty excited to read in Richard Dawkins The God Delusion about Camp Quest - "founded in 1996, [it] is the first residential summer camp in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Norway specifically for the children of nontheistic or freethinking parents (including atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, religious humanists, skeptics, rationalists, Brights, Unitarian Universalists, and others who hold a naturalistic worldview)". (Wiki). 


Hmmm, Canada? Ireland? Norway? These countries have been calling to me for a while now. Which one? which one? ..................... 


Their mission: Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States aimed at the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.

The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.

Through our programs we seek to:

• Build a community for freethinking families
• Foster curiosity, questioning, and critical thinking
• Encourage reason and compassion as foundations of an ethical, productive and fulfilling life
• Raise awareness of positive contributions made by atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic people to our society
• Promote an open dialogue about metaphysical questions that is marked by challenging each other’s ideas while at the same time treating each other with respect
• Demonstrate atheism and humanism as positive, family-friendly worldviews.

They have a list of activities that I can get excited about! compared to the infuriating list of requirements that had to be checked off over the course of the Mormon camp experience (the boys didn't have a list of requirements grrrrrr!). One more moan for old times sake... they won't be subjected to intrusive scrutiny for their choice of clothing or style. 


America has a LOT of churches getting their groove on. Being an atheist in America is something many  people prefer to keep quiet about. I don't know if the same holds true here in Australia, I haven't been atheist long enough to find out I think. I wonder whether my kids will encounter any flack for having atheist parents...


   "Nearly two million American adults openly identify themselves as atheist or agnostic, according to a 2001 survey by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. As a group, they face more than their share of bigotry, said Edwin F. Kagin, Camp Quest's longtime director, and their children are often made to feel like outcasts.

    Many of the two dozen campers who attended this year's session last week recounted experiences of being called names and otherwise harassed. For instance, Travis Leepers, 17, from Louisiana, reported that just about everyone he knows has expressed concern to him about his soul and has tried to convert him.

    Sophia Riehemann, 14, from Bellevue, Ky., recalled how one of her schoolmates called her a devil-worshiper. "People get really confused sometimes," Sophia said. "They think that if we don't believe in God we believe in the devil."

    At Camp Quest, children age 8 to 17 take part in all the usual summer camp activities. But in addition to horseback riding, organized water balloon fights and outdoor survival lessons, the camp's volunteer staff aims to promote a healthy respect for science and rational inquiry, while assuring campers that there is nothing wrong with not believing in the Bible and not putting stock in a supreme creator."

Summer Camp That's a Piece of Heaven for the Children, but Please, No Worshiping, By Susan Hansen. Published: June 29, 2005. The New York Times. 

I have no idea how to end this post and I've been dying to tie in the invisible unicorn theme but I am so tired and just can't be arsed tinkering with this write-up any longer. Unicorn poop for everyone! Goodnight. 

The Sanctity of Marriage (Otherwise known as the Hypocritical Oath)

"The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a queer couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms, and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of genuine wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said no more."

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy pp. 480-1.

and...

"Jude, do you think that when you must have me with you by law, we shall be so happy as we are now? [...] Don't you dread the attitude that insensibly arises out of legal obligation? Don't you think it is destructive to a passion whose essence is its gratuitousness?"

p338.