Name: Diane Fadden
Born: 1962
Location: Everett, Washington
Label: Atheist
Previous Religious Affiliation: Born again Christian 30+ years
My Story:
I’m 50 this year and still trying to find myself, after living most of my life for other people or . . . being what I thought I had to be in order to be loved. I became a Christian for that reason, in my early 20′s, at the Billy Graham Crusade here in Seattle. It was all about winning points and my mother’s love. But always I had questions I had to ignore to just believe. It’s like I had corners of my brain I had to shut off. I am also an amateur paleontologist. Or rather I was. Because the bible contradicted science, I had to use my own faculties to merge what the bible said with what I knew, what I had learned from not only reading a lot but holding fossils I personally recovered, in my hands.
I guess the bottom line is, I don’t believe a god would make human beings flawed, which he obviously did, and then say here’s the repair kit, guys, and if you don’t accept it, I’m going to torture you forever. How can that make sense? I guess also when I started questioning what bits of the bible were true versus what couldn’t be, that’s when the questions got louder in my head and there just weren’t any answers coming. How can an omniscient being make mistakes or have regrets, and yet the biblical god did this all the time. He made his own enemy, he made Lucifer, knowing ahead of time he was doing so. He made humans naive and clueless, put a forbidden tree of knowledge in close proximity to those humans knowing ahead of time those clueless naive humans would succumb to his enemy’s trick–and then he punished humans when they did exactly what he knew they would do, and made them anyway because it was part of his plan.
I guess that’s the part I couldn’t wrap my mind around and finally it unraveled me, or rather my “faith.” The idea that god knew ahead of time the consequences of making humans ignorant, ie. vulnerable to “Satan,” and then putting them in close proximity to Satan like … or as if, he wanted it all to happen just as it did … and then when it did getting angry and punishing those humans for it, and all humanity afterward for it.
This is not the actions of a loving anything, and certainly not an all knowing, all powerful, omniscient deity. In fact it seems to me more the actions of a sadistic scientist who enjoys torturing little animals.
Anyway, I realized after all this pondering … none of it makes sense. And it was really hard to walk away. After 30 years of being a Christian, coming to the realization it is all made up and there is no god after all, was scary. All of a sudden I realized I am alone. But since I did come to realize this–I have only hungered for more knowledge, more understanding, more reality. And what’s funny is, the more reality I embrace, the happier I am with being all alone, and not being watched or constantly judged for everything I say, do or think.
Tagged with: Atheist • Born-Again Christian • paleontologist • Seattle • Washington
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Thanks a lot for posting, Diane. I know exactly what you mean about the self-esteem bit. I went through that for over 20 years too. It’s pretty awful. I’m so glad to see someone over 30 de-converting. I was getting pretty cynical about anyone past their 20s for a minute there.
I lovelovelove your comment “If you make a boat with a hole in it and it sinks, whose fault is that, the boat, or the guy who made the boat.”
That was one of the final turning points in my leaving Christianity and eventually the idea of god altogether. My way of expressing it was a little different. If you design a building in which the doors open inward, and there’s a fire, and 1000 people die, whose fault is that, the people inside, or the guy who designed the building? Well said. Thanks for your awesome testimony.
GOD wants a human not to sin or commit any mistakes knowingly or unknowingly in thier thoughts, deeds or words – PERIOD. Essentially a man on earth has to live an error free life to progress in spiritual life. Life on earth is a test. Just like we have laws for various crimes GOD also makes man pay for his sins or mistakes.
If a person commits a sin or a good deed, it gets recorded just like in a bank – debit / credit. This record is kept of every moment of a persons life – every action, every thought and every word is recorded of every human being. Based on the debit / credit of bad and good deeds you are reborn with a free will. (This is where GOD is ever forgiving – that he gives you another chance to set it all right, while you pay for your past sins and reap the benefits of the good you did. There is still a chance for one to be clean and make progress. This cycle continues.
Since living a life without sinning in deeds, thoughts and words is not as simple as it sounds, GOD says if you want help to achieve this, think of ME all the time. For when you think of GOD all the time there is little chance that you will sin.
It is as simple as that.
Now based on the sins and the good you’ve committed you are reborn, that’s when you see people born in an affluent family, spiritual family, born deformed, born homeless, abandoned etc And also based on the past of yours your present life unfolds. Each sin of yours has to be paid back / each good of yours is rewarded. We are all GOD conscious but the sins we’ve committed covers it up and we are not aware. The more you clean your self up the more you realize your natural affiliation to GOD. The more you sin the more unaware you are.
Earth is a bridge that a human needs to cross to move further in spiritual life into the billions of plantes that we know exists. Humans are given a free will, so every situation they face they decide on their own whether to succumb or to overcome, the more you overcome the sterner the tests become for you are always exposed to, just about that much that you can bear. This exposure to sterner stuff is if you have more sins to pay off than the good you’ve done to reap from. If you’ve done mostly good and a few sins thats when you see people who have the best of everything in their life – but the sad part is if one messes that life with alcohol / crime / gambling / drugs / illicit sex etc he goes back to a tough life in his next birth. Until humans pass this test they are born over and over again. When they die – each one of them are aware of the mistakes they’ve committed in their past lives. There are various levels at which each human is. And earth is the only place where human can speed up his growth. That’s when we chose to come back for we want to progress, but when we are back we start from zero – no memory of the past.
Religion / church / temple / mosque / priests etc are business just like other businesses. Priests are similar to sales men in any store, they are suppossed to follow the simple regulatory rules GOD has laid out but since the don’t they just go about their jobs like any salesman does.
Seek for a sipirtual guidance with all sincerity or ask GOD HIMSELF to guide you in every step of your life, HE will. You can do it from home, no need to go to the church or temple and pray. You can pray from wherever. Why people go to church / temple etc is jus like how we go to stores to check out merchandize. One can connect easily to GOD in a church etc for the ambience is such. Religion is basically there to take man closer to GOD but sadly the priests have made a business out of it either to satisfy their material needs / or lead a comfortable life without any hard work or to fulfill their carnal desires. That’s when some of them lose faith in GOD – when actually they should be losing faith on the priest but they take that out on GOD for reasons best known to them. GOD is not there to prove HIMSELF to us, HE’s there for us to find HIM and once we’ve found HIM, HE guides us through every moment of our life if we seek to be guided.