One of Carl Sagan's most pertinent messages for humanity

Born Unplugged pt. 5

(Click here for PART 4)

In 1997 HBO aired a tribute to comedian George Carlin called 40 years of Comedy.  The special included clips from many of his classic routines such as ‘The seven dirty words’, ‘Football vs. Baseball’, and ‘The hippy-dippy weatherman’.  The program went on to feature the guest of honor himself performing a bit from his most recent special at the time, You’re all Diseased.  The finest moment of the show came at the midway point and would go on to be known as “Religion is Bullshit.”  This was the sincerest, most crucial turning point in my journey and the crux of this entire blog.

The set was mirroring almost the same exact words that were bouncing around in my head since grade school.  With this man on the screen saying it loud and proud, this is pretty much where the switch got flipped.   At first I was shocked and a little afraid. I remember thinking. ‘He’s allowed to say this stuff?’ but as he went on, the words just sunk in.  And I mean REALLY sunk in. Before all of this, I was always told about god and the devil, and while I never gave it any real credence I never questioned it either.  By the time that show had ended I had come to the somewhat partial understanding that A) I wasn’t wrong for thinking the way I did, and B) I was not by myself.  There was a great deal of comfort in knowing there was at least one other person who wasn’t “drinking the kool-aid”. 

There wasn’t a lot I could do to keep my mother from pissing money away when the collection plate came around or tuning into Bobby Jones gospel on BET which was a show that every now and then would feature half-baked musical acts that were offered as an alternative to mainstream music. I can recall one Sunday where I was called away from an episode of Biker Mice from Mars to hear a ‘rousing’ rendition of a gospel remix of the hip hop song “Jump” (FYI, having the exact same beat and rhyme flow, peppered with ‘god’ and ‘jesus’ and bible quotes isn’t all that original).  Fortunately artists like LeCrae (of whom I will unreservedly admit to being a fan) bring the subgenre of holy hip hop some artistic credibility.

It wasn’t until I sat reading the letters page of a comic book called The Savage Dragon that I finally learned the word for what I was: Atheist.  And that was it. There was no huge epiphany, no “I hate god for making the world this way or that”; as far as I was concerned there was no god to hate.  So I graduated high school and entered my adulthood perfectly comfortable not having a god, not going to church, very few worries and no fear of getting burned or jabbed with a pitchfork.  You’d think everything from there on would be smooth sailing.  Even when Bush thugged his way into white house there was no way things could get any more screwed up, at least that’s what I was thinking.  In my sophomore year of college I couldn’t have imagined how much the world around me would change when I woke up for class that one Tuesday morning (can you take a wild guess at what I’m talking about here?).  From then on it was more or less the circus Carlin predicted it would be.  Muslim and Christians muscling up to go at each other’s throats overseas, gas prices shooting into the mesosphere, the patriot act, etc…and at age 19 all I could honestly say about the situation was “What the fuck?”

I got 99 problems and 'hovah ain't about to be one.

I remember the first time I ever encountered a jehovah’s witness. I was about nine and my dad had picked me up from school.  I got out of the car to unlock the door and two elderly black men stepped out of their car and approached me asking for my father.  These men were wearing dark suits and overcoats and appeared to be fairly intimidating, sinister even.  I was taught what to do if a stranger approaches you and I was ready to do just that; I wasn’t fast but I knew the block, I knew what doors to knock on.  Two blacks against over a dozen Latinos? (I think we were the only black family in that neighborhood), nobody’s that stupid.  But I’ve digressed.  I was told to go inside by my dad but instead I stayed at the bottom of the stair case. I thought these guys were like bill collectors or gangsters, two sets of people I didn’t particularly care for, and wanted to make sure I heard everything in case they turned out to be the latter.  The point I’m trying to make here is that I didn’t like them.  No reason yet, just a feeling.  I didn’t get all the details, I just knew they were from a church and tried to get my dad to join them, and in the nicest way possible he told them to kick rocks.

               

Last weekend I had a jehova's witness drop by, middle-aged/elderly fellow, just a few years behind my dad. It was the same vulture that swooped by when he got sick a while back, and I had half a mind to tell to piss off, but the initial silliness that he vomited nearly crippled me with laughter:

"You know son, even to this day scientist don’t understand why people grow old and die.  Because, you see when god created adam and eve, he created them to live forever….”

And that’s where he turned into the teacher in a Peanuts TV special, (“wah wah waah, wah”).  For the next five minutes it took everything I had not to cut him off and ask, “I know this is the south, I know I’m a black man, and thus born into a culture that is all but incurably religious, but really? REALLY? How stupid do I truly look to you?? What scientists have you been talking to? Did you even go to college?” I’ll bet you’ve only read one book in your life, haven’t you?  And it’s getting you chewed out on a total stranger’s doorstep right now.” Just a few key questions I might have next time.  

This makes the fourth time this joker’s been by.  I don’t make a fuss because I sincerely try to respect my elders and I don’t see the point in a throwing away 20 minutes of my life on an impromptu debate when I can let the monkey chatter for 5 minutes and then watch him scurry away and give someone else a headache.  I know he’ll be back.  He can come back as often as he likes, he can leave a stack watchtower journals as tall as I am,  that just means I’ll save some money on toilet paper.  Just sayin’. 

It's not terribly difficult dealing with jw's.  It only takes three to five minutes to let them sit there and yak and it's an interesting exercise in discipline.  I try to see how long I can go without snickering or just flat out calling 'bullshit'.  Once they leave they don't come back for months.  The main thing is DO NOT LET THEM INTO THE HOUSE, otherwise they'll be more and more comfortable stopping by.  That's the last thing you need.

Context?

Born Unplugged Pt. 4

(Click Here for PART 3)

“It’s Easter Sunday and the majority of my family is likely in church. It’s the final day to celebrate a man being brutally killed and becoming a zombie three days later.”

That was going to be my opener when I started writing this a few weeks ago.  Then I kept getting sidetracked and it turned out to be longer than I expected.  Easter is the big day where most folks pile into the pew to shout and cry and fall to their knees and give what little they have to ‘sew the seed’, all in hopes of receiving forgiveness for the crime of being born as well as for the death of a scrawny half-naked hippie tacked to a pair of 2 x 4’s.  A death that supposedly happened 2,000 years ago. 

When I began this blog its sole purpose was to recount my journey to realizing I was an atheist.  I wrote briefly about what it’s like being dragged into church and having to listen to broken-record sermons and about the near-robotic call and response bible readings.  The order and structure of the service would eventually break  down into an uproar of squeals and spasms and expressions of thanks for ‘blessings’ like paying the light bill on time or finding your keys or landing a job and a bunch of other day to day stuff Jesus tends to get credit for. The congregation would go into these fits, jumping out of their seats, and convulsing, losing near total control of their motor functions.  Some even started dancing, doing little variations on a basic two-step.  I wish I had better words to paint this picture but all I can tell you is that these people were going straight up guano.

What vexes me even to this day, is how whenever anyone (christian) finds themself in a fucked up situation, they are utterly convinced that they are MEANT to be there.  Either that or some external force is trying to ‘steal their joy’.  The best example I can offer for this point is my mother.  You would’ve had to be dead to see that she and my dad were just flat out wrong for each other.   Much of their communication consisted of yelling at each other or yelling at me.  (I was a kid, they were parents, that’s kind of how it went.)  Being a book-smart 90’s kid, I could tell they had serious personal and interpersonal issues and had tossed out the idea of therapy, but that wasn’t happening.  I mean after all who needs a licensed professional when you have church? ‘The lawd gonna work it out’ right? That was usually mom’s solution to a problem.  She wasn’t what you would call a thinking individual (or she didn’t think enough.)  But yeah, that was the shtick for most folks in my family; get on those knees, put them hands together and stay there.  “Pray fuh ya daddy.”  Don’t ask for the respect you deserve, “Pray fuh’im”.  Don’t stand up for yourself, “Pray that devil out of’im.” Don’t educate yourself, don’t try to work on yourself or use better judgment, just “Pray for your enemy”, “Love your enemy”, “love that devil out of him” and it will all work out.  Years, YEARS of wasted time and breath all while he plods around the house in the seemingly effortless act of stamping out the little self-worth you actually do have.  Don’t take your medicine, don’t cut back on the Mickey D’s and eat some fruit, or get the minimum 30 minutes of exercise, “Just pray on it and claim yo’ healin’ in the name of tha lawd!” 

While this is a very specific reflection, I believe it be an adequate microcosm of the overbearing role religion plays in black America; it causes a vast amount of individuals to insist that “prayer changes things”.  Both church and home were filled with phrases like “The Devil is a lie!” and “Look/Turn to your neighbor and say…” and let’s not forget the ever popular “The lawd got a plan for everything.”  Everything, eh?  Like the kid on the schoolyard that gets beat bloody for no reason other than getting the high score on the test?  That’s part of god’s plan right?  Or that stroke that turns you into an invalid because you weren’t eating right or dealing with your stress.  There’s a plan there, sure.  Or what about staying in a relationship/ marriage and raising or being raised in a family with a verbally abusive asshat.  That’s his plan for her? For him? For you or me or whoever he decides to squat over on that particular day??  And that’s just the light stuff in my view.  Child soldiers, sex trafficking, Boston anyone?  Here I am a grade schooler/ teenager/grown motherfucking man hearing all of this and thinking ‘You’re shitting me right??’

                Still as child I felt the adults knew more simply because they were adults (at least this is what I acquiesced to, the alternative being a slap in the mouth.)  Sunday school, where there was nothing even remotely scholastic taking place to give legitimacy to such a title, was a protracted story-time where the few children there did shit else other than parroting the scriptures shoved down their throats and beat into their heads by the time they were old enough to know what their own farts smelled like.  I remember the ‘classes’, the simplicity of the curriculum and how the recitations yielded smiles and applause from parents and elders; I felt like a damn circus monkey.  “Jesus was born when god put a piece of himself in Mary.” …If only I knew then what I know now…Should I quote Goldilocks and the three bears as well, Bishop? Or Deacon or whatever you like to be called while your ego is stroked.  A little blonde girl found in the youngest male bear’s bed, I’m sure there was bit of rape taking place in that book just like in yours.  By age nine, after all of the regular Sunday services and choir rehearsals every other week, I had had enough. It wasn’t the suits and the dresses or the goofy-ass hats or the endless singing and wailing. It wasn’t even the fact that my own mother was ready willing and able to BEAT ME DOWN THE STAIRS AND INTO THE CAR.  No, my reason for putting the juke moves on the jesus-freaks was the distaste for the mindset they embrace.  The mindset that they are innately weak, that they are born fucked up (Yet more fuel for a future blog). 

So there I am my newly won “freedom”, my Sundays now spent watching WWF All-American Wrestling, and whatever I could find on cable as well as the occasional football game with the old man.  Even so, I still held a flimsy belief in god; you could call it a cultural formality.  I didn’t know that you were allowed to not believe.  Black folks not going to church was one thing but black people and god in general were supposed to be tight.  When I was fifteen HBO held a week long tribute to comedian George Carlin to honor his then 40 years in comedy.  George was everything you love in a comedian, not just quick-witted but masterful with his wordplay.  He was irreverent, he cursed like a sailor and thanks to the exceptional teachers in my social studies classes his political humor was never lost on me.  My exposure to his work gave a very profound peek into the world of adults and helped me learn to do what my parents constantly insisted upon even if they themselves could or would not: THINK.  As far as my remaining ties to Christianity, this was pretty much the beginning of the end….

(More to Come...)

A NEW CROP OF BIGOTS

A blog on this gay marriage thing coming soon.  This will tell the tale of where I stand for now

Born Unplugged Pt. 3

(Click here for PART 2)

Ever since my old man kicked off, the one thing that picks at my brain is the question of whether or not he was an atheist.  I doubt he knew what the word meant, but he was never one to prattle on about god or how great he was or how thankful we should be.  The main thing that leads me to think he was a non-believer was the fact that he never went to church when everyone else in the house was required to go.  Even at a young age I knew my dad hated church for almost the same reasons I did: It was a waste of a Sunday and furthermore, a waste of financial resources.  I always wondered why he got to stay home.  Because he worked and needed rest? But it was church; he had to go, right? In any case, that was one of my main issues about these Sunday outings.  Why was it ok for him to stay home? Why wasn’t it ok for me? Why was it that he and I were the only ones that understood how this was sucking away our money, our time together, and causing so much static in the home?

It wasn’t until sometime last year, while my father was bedridden with a stroke; he and my mom had a pretty heated argument where the exchange was something along the lines of my father saying he would go to heaven when he died and she said “you ain’t goin' ta heaven 'cause ya don’t believe!”  I could tell by the way he got quiet, that had hurt him.  But it struck a nerve in me as well.  Like all interactions that parents have in front of their children, this one left its mark. Even at the age of thirty their arguing was a cause of agonizing emotional stress and those words just burrowed into my brain and stayed there right up until he died.  At this juncture of my life where I’ve recently become open about my atheism, I have spent the past few months wondering who else in my family believes as I do.  How many are positive that all the screaming and shouting and sheer guilt that they have to listen to every week is 100% bullshit. How many of them are either too uneducated or too ashamed to admit that they don’t know what the answers are, but those answers aren’t in the big pretty building, the preacher, or the book?  Do I have the balls ask? Again, this is perhaps the one question I regret not asking my father. I’m just happy I was able to answer the question for myself.

--R. S.

Shock and Awe: A Former Christian Ponders the Cosmos (HD)

What religion has contributed to the world this month - Episode 3 (Janua...

Born Unplugged Pt.2

(Click here for PART 1)

I used to think they called Sunday because it was, well, the sun.  On those Sundays where it was so sunny and I was forced into my Sunday suit it was especially hot.  Did it bother the congregation?  Nope, they stood in that heat outside that pinkish-beige stone church conversing and gossiping. It almost exclusively women and kids (maybe exclusive is the wrong word) with a few men sprinkled about, everyone with their fly suits, fancy dresses and big-as hats.  And did I mention their happy face; that false grin that black folks are so good at?  The kind that comes attached to phrases like “The lawd woke me up today.” The kind that developed during slavery as a kind of coping mechanism for really fucked up situations (that’s my take on it anyway). 

Church had always been a weird environment for me; it’s like Showtime at the Apollo and Dance Dance Revolution got together and had a baby.  The service would begin by marching through the door to mind-numbingly repetitive songs about suffering and weakness, songs that extoll how unworthy we humans are and how we would be nothing if not for clutching to these myths.  Another 20 to 30 minutes of chatter from the church officers, another jesus song, maybe two, and then the preacher would come up for the main sermon.  The whole time the children were made to sit down and shut up, especially the ones who thought to ask why or how? Or what does it mean?  Each time they were told in one way or another listen to the preacher, while adults and the elderly applauded the discourse from the pulpit with utterances of “Amen”, “That’s right”, or “Jesus” and so on.

About an hour later there would be another song, followed by the main or key sermon.  Eventually the tension and the drama of the minister’s voice would build until he began yelling and snorting like a wild hog (anyone who’s ever been to a black church, even once, know exactly what I’m talking about here).  I remember asking “Why doesn’t someone call an ambulance or at least have a doctor on here”, and my mother would say, “That’s just the preacher gittin’ the holy ghos’”.  All of the singing and yelling and praising would usually lead up to what I can only describe as a mass psychotic breakdown. The congregation would go into these fits; from jumping from their seats and convulsing to doing variations on a simple two-step.  I remember watching this chaos and thinking “They think this is a good thing?!” It wasn’t until I was older that I realized the cultural aspect behind what they called “shouting.”

(To be continued…)

Best Christopher Hitchens quotes

Born Unplugged Pt. 1

The few people that know I'm an atheist rarely bring it up. I like to think it’s because they know me and that my words and actions speak far greater volumes than whether or not I buy into a fairytale.  To be honest I hate talking about religion and when it comes up I tend to avoid it like a pro athlete dodging child support, either changing the subject or simply remaining silent, allowing  friends and family to indulge in their fancies and wish-thinking until the conversation moves on (or I do).  I decided to start up this blog for two reasons, the most practical being to inform anyone who cares to ask, and secondly, because these writings are my own meditation on where I stand.  This is the first time I have actually taken the time to think on this and put forth an effort to put it into words.

So why am I an atheist? How did I come to this point? No matter how the question is posed it is never a simple answer, but a long, partially biographical one.  I say partial because non-belief was never really that big a deal to me.  I always saw it as a matter of preference, like how lots of folks like ice cream; you have some like chocolate,  some like vanilla, other people who like other flavors and those who don’t like ice cream at all.  I finally realized there’s no easy answer to this question, and for some, no acceptable one.  So I’ll just have to tell this story as clearly as I possibly can and keep it moving. 

I remember being about 5 or 6 years old and my mother would read a children’s bible story book to me before bed.  It had all the classic tales, Adam and Eve, Moses, Jesus, yadda yadda yadda and even when she tried to transition me to the actual bible, these stories never came across as anything more than a bunch of long, boring narratives with no relevance to the world around me.  They never even had the basic elements, no thrills or frights, no hero’s journey.  Just a few bits that told us to be good, and being rather vague as to what happens when we’re not. Not even a happy ending. 

My mother used to take me to church at every given opportunity (and for the record, let’s not mistake the word take for an indication of my willingness).  She and my sisters would get up so early and after breakfast begin taking hot combs and curling irons to their hair amidst the squawking of the TV, the radio, and their own voices.  So much joy was taken in getting dolled up for their weekly fashion show  and with my father either working some manic weekend shift, or catching up on his sleep as a result of said shift, I was forced into a penguin suit and shuffled off Paterson, New Jersey’s “Highway Church of Christ” (My first bit of cognitive dissonance was that the building was not located anywhere on or even near a highway) where I would watch grown men and women playing dress up and partake in what I can describe as a weekly study in the application of  boredom….and hysteria .

(To be continued…)