Religion Delusion

Warning: long post. A few bad words, too.

Not quite sure. This post is potentially two things. It’s either a bad (that is, badly written) review or a bad letter motivated by and written to Richard Dawkins. With that in mind… Let’s just go with it dear fellow (worst)writers and see what happens.

Dear Mr. Richard Dawkins,

Thank you for writing the book “The God Delusion”. I’m always very happy to buy a book for around 10,- Euro and then be preoccupied with it for days. That doesn’t happen often because the publishing industry is, well, full of krapp and krapp is very overpriced - which is reason enough for life to delegate someone like me to blogging. I especially like the end of the preface to the paperback that I had to special order in English since I live in Germany.

Your book was/is a great read but I’d like to focus for a just a sec on the end of your preface. I was away in Italy a few weeks ago. One of the things I did in Italy was have my girlfriend read my new novel to me out loud. It was the first time I ever did such a thing and it was a great experience that has helped me, I think, see/hear some of the problems first hand in the manuscript.

When I got home your book finally arrived and I began immediately to read it. When I finished your preface where you recommend that other writers have someone read their manuscript to them out loud… I thought: Wow. What a coincidence. How did he know that I just did that? I was, I don’t know, kind of tickled - but not in a mystical sense. Is it just me or do you think that’s weird?

One other thing happened to me after I started reading your book. I decided to take a walk and sometimes while doing that I like to read a book. It’s good for my back since I sit so much. (Warning: I do not recommend to anyone to walk around with their head in a book, especially in Germany where cars/drivers won’t think twice about running you over if you miss a pedestrian traffic light.) As I approached a corner where I planned to turn left to assume my walking route, I was reading Chapter 2 “The God Hypothesis”, guess what came around the corner at the same time? Are you ready for this? I swear this is true! Four nuns. I’m not kidding. I walked a block without reading another page. I thought… Can this be happening to me? I’ve randomly seen one or two nuns around certain German towns. But here were four - and I’m reading a book on atheism. Oh boy…

Anyway. I got over the little… coincidence and you’re book motivated me to finally sit down – since I’m going through a kind of writer’s block right now – and write my thoughts on being an atheist. I especially want to thank you for helping me realize that I can come out of my closet. Part of my outing is attached/below.

Sincerely,

Thomas Stough
aka worstwriter

(Worst)Writer motivations caused by a book.

I just finished reading the paperback version of Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”. Mr. Dawkins has put together a splendid piece of work expressing his ideas of atheism including a nice introduction into the concept of natural selection. It is the first time I’ve actually read anything about Darwin’s very important theory (shame on me for that) and the whole idea of “natural selection” is fascinating. Oddly though, as I was reading the book, I expected Mr. Dawkins to be a bit more forthwith regarding the promotion of atheism. He is not. Instead, what he does with this wonderful read is nothing more than explain why and how religion has obviously damaged humanity. If anyone wants to debate a religious fundamentalist you will need ammunition. It’s in this book.

Becoming an ex-pat and running from “religion”.

After almost twenty years I wish I could become an ex-ex-pat. Unfortunately there’s no place for me to run anymore. Here the main reasons I became an expatriate (please don’t mind if I misspell this word once or twice - I like all meanings of the word no matter how it’s written) in the first place: opportunity, culture, (and the want to run from) hypocrisy. Oddly, living in Germany, where religion is in the government and almost mandatory due to compulsory religious taxation, the hypocrisy isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s not fundamental or fanatic. I reckon that has to do with the fact that the Germans keep religion where it belongs: in the churches or under the bedsheets. Sometimes I wish I could go home - and someday I’m almost sure I will. But that will probably be as ashes and via the ocean. Yet while living in Germany/Europe almost all my dreams consist of my beloved Chesapeake Bay, her rivers and marshes and the sound of critters at dusk who truly know a kind of paradise. Then I always wake up to watch my country of birth deteriorate into a slush pile of political and religious wingnut krapp. When I’ve got a good buzz in my head from wine and Mozart or Miles Davis I think every once-a-once that I should go back to America just to try and help. You know, like an f’n boyscout. But then I think, what for? I’m an artist – yes, a failed artist. On top of that I’m an atheist. At the least, being an artist helps one see through the false face of a country that thinks it’s great because it has big guns, subservient debt corporations and the culture of a house of cards. Where has America’s greatness gone?

Religion as void filler.

The US confusion today is in large part due to exactly that which made the country great: greed, innovation, very hard work and secularism. The founding fathers wrote some basic rules on how to control that which could/would make a nation great. In hindsight they were almost clairvoyant. But America, ever since, has lost touch with the fact that the founding fathers were ONLY the initiators and in order for their ideas to prosper the nation couldn’t stand still or rest on laurels. America has learned to stand still and it’s made a bed of laurels. It’s gloating over being the victor of some abstract human conflict which culminated at the end of the twentieth century. Certainly that which the founding fathers achieved was, almost, I dare say, magical. It’s somehow ironic that the only magic it can now believe in has to do with virgin births and waking up after death. Yes, sadly, if you look beyond the “magic” today it seems that all America really has left to offer is greed.

“Religion” feeds on greed, don’t it?

Religion is part of the hypocrisy I ran from almost twenty years ago. Yet even now I find it hard to add religion outright to my ex-pat-reasoning list. I’m apprehensive because of the simple fact that when I was growing up, religion wasn’t all that bad, although I’m sure many atheists today would clearly disagree with me on that. I also grew up in a very racist environment yet, thanks to my German born and now American mother, I was open minded, tolerant and yearned for companionship of any kind. In hindsight – and I may be wrong here - the US was still “secular” in the seventies and religion was still where it belonged: in the churches and in peoples hearts.

The coming of religious sickness.

Something inherent in me, probably something Darwinian, told me to avoid the religion being offered no matter what – least you want to be sick, too. At a very early age and very very limited intellectual capacity, I became a so-called “agnostic”. Although I wanted companionship, I despised the price I had to pay for it in the world I had no choice but to live in, which included at the least, submitting myself to the wants and errs of pastors, vehement religious mothers and authoritative fathers that paid no attention to the feelings of others that just didn’t want to talk about Jesus twenty-four-seven.

Religion equals exclusion.

I thought it was very strange that when we played a weird kind of water-polo game (we actually called it redneck water-polo) in the community pool the Baptist kids wouldn’t pick any of the Catholic kids to be on their team. When a Jew jumped into the public pool the Methodists would get out of the water. Luckily they all seemed to take to me and that was because it was known that I was a Protestant being raised by a Catholic step-father. But every so often an Episcopalian or Methodist kid would come up to me and question my heritage. The reason for that was when each spring came around I was always the first white person to get the deepest and darkest tan. That’s why I was usually picked by the Catholic or the Baptist kids to be on their team. I may be wrong here but my thoughts are that the Baptists were from the deep south. They had learned to live with the prejudice against dark skin. Baptist girls especially loved my very tan AND ”white” skin. But there was one other reason I was accepted in the hypocritical neighborhood. Everybody loved my mother’s German accent. (FYI, I’m not sure of my heritage on my father’s side, but I am sure that’s it’s not just white!)

Racism and Hypocrisy.

Yes. In white racist hypocritical America, there is a strange and perverted infatuation to certain things the Germans tried to do in the middle of the twentieth century. How I landed in the middle of that krapp is almost a mystery to me. It was strange, indeed, to listen to a Baptist or Episcopalian parent (the Episcopalian was missing two fingers and the Baptist had a hole in his leg) talk so respectfully of kicking the ass of such a worthy opponent in 1945 Europe. Ironically (or not) they didn’t talk with so much respect about the Pacific War and defeating those that didn’t look the same as them. Every so often the subject came up about (their words not mine!) “the Jew thing that Hitler did get right” and when I went home to confront my mother about that there was only the comment that she really didn’t get a chance to finish school and learn about all that.

Soldiers pay, eh!

My step-father and my mother had a child and I was happy to have a baby sister – who I would never refer to as my “half” sister. With her birth a more regulated attendance of church was at hand. I found it rather amusing walking down sidewalks and watching each family go off on their own little denomination tangents. Afterwards some families would meet for barbecue or mint juleps. One day I asked my mother why we went to a Catholic church and she told me specifically that we’re going to fit in. Then she added before the preacher started: “Just sit and be quiet, you’re not Catholic but it won’t hurt you to listen. You’ll get used to it.” Another time I asked: “OK, Mom, but I want to fit in so I can play on either side of the redneck water-polo game. Can I have a piece of Jesus bread, too?” Her north-German upbringing vigorously held me back from the transubstantiation stuff. I can still feel today how my confused, Protestant mother held my hand as the Catholic priest dished out the imaginary flesh of Jesus to my step-father as he held his new daughter. I didn’t quite know why but I was proud of my mother and the fact that she was able to separate her life as she did. I didn’t know it then, but the ash of the bombs she was born under can certainly enable a phoenix to rise. It’s unfortunate that she got caught up with a drunk GI who was full of nothing but promises. But then again, I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t.

My beautiful mother looked just like Elizabeth Taylor and walked with only remnants of Prussian dignity, clueless to the politics and religious fanaticism that annihilated all of her birth history. She was born in a war ridden zone in 1943. Desperate for companionship in the crumble of it all, she fended for herself in the only way a woman can. What a fight my mother fought! She deserves, no matter what her fathers did, as much as any other woman, a chance to have what she wants: a family. And so I watched her watch her husband take some Jesus flesh from a safe protestant distance. To be able to provide for her two GI-occupation children my mother gave herself one last time to a man of American-Polish decent willing to accept what was left of her beauty and forgive her German-heritage faults – even though his parents ran from her maniacal fatherland.

“Just sit and be quiet, listen to the preacher, it will be over soon,” my mother told me as I jealously watched her new husband and my new baby sister nip the white, round piece of Jesus from a priest’s fingers. Throughout my youth I always wondered what Jesus tasted like and to this day I thank my dear Mother for preventing me having that knowledge.

Islam or American Evangelist?

Jimmy Carter was president when consciousness started to really shift for me. And there were the TV evangelists that seemed to pop up out of nowhere and they were everywhere. Then there was this weird thing called Iran and Islam. Carter was trying to deal with a hostage crisis and get re-elected. This was the first time I started to think with all my limited intellectual capacity about politics and religion and the fact that I soon would have to register for both the draft and the privilege to vote. Then came this big old man with perfect hair and a very thin but loud-mouth wife. Ronald Regan promised to get the hostages back and the TV evangelists applauded that. I heard for the first time kids at the pool talking about how their Dad was never gonna vote Democrat again because liberals are obviously weak. Along with the stupid jokes about killing Kennedy’s, it seemed as though there would never be a chance of a democratic president again. (Please no comments about Bill Clinton. Remember: he was the best “republican” president ever.) Then suddenly Jimmy Carter sealed his fate and botched getting the American hostages out of Iran. Wow. The first time I went to a voting booth I was still thinking about fitting in to my neighborhood and about botched preemptive military action but I didn’t really know the difference between a republican and a democrat other than the fact the “God” seemed to favor one of them.

The Regan Delusion.

For me, the result of my first presidential vote as an American born citizen was also the period in life where I would begin to understand what delusion is all about. I talked to everybody about politics before I voted for the first time because I knew that I was gonna learn nothing in school about how to determine who (or what?) you vote for. (Having been held back I was eligible to vote as a senior in high school.) Back then, unfortunately, I didn’t think much about the fact that most of what people said about politics was under the cloak of religion. Dogma was everywhere. Dogma was a swimming pool and a game of redneck water polo. Dogma was Ronald Regan getting in the TV tube and looking and sounding mighty fine.

A little smart-ass side note. Needless to say, I was very disappointed when the movie Dogma came out in 1999. It ruined my love for the word. Although quite funny with Chris Rock, it’s just a silly and pretentious pop movie that gives college educated morons – yes, the ones that are ruling everything in the US – cause to think they know enough about religion to actually make a movie about it. I mean, come on, at least Monty Python made good movies that fucked with the whole religious thing and did it with lots of non-college-educated smarts! I don’t know, call me a nut-case, but a movie full of “Angels” and other biblical mis-interpretations played by people who look just like they came from a frat party… Well. Whatever.

It’s to (too) late.

Hell, forget the whole idea of teaching evolution or (idiotic) creationism in public schools these days. Back when I was young no one was even taught that the founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, was VERY critical of religion. I became fascinated with the zero explanations I would receive when I asked people the difference between a deist and a theist. I had read-up about it in the school encyclopedias. And when I tried to tell them what it was they were all clueless and, most importantly, on the defense. I couldn’t understand why or what they were defending. Of course it wasn’t the same when I asked the difference between a republican and democrat. I just wanted to talk about what I read so that I could make a good and decent decision. But everybody I talked to wanted more than anything that I do what they say or think like they think. Things got really weird when I tried to get an explanation about why the Iranians hated us and wanted to take us hostage. The result of all my questioning was the occasional inquisition or crusade like response: “Tom, my young falsely curious friend, if they don’t believe what we believe then we kill them and let God sort them out. Ask your mother – her people know all about that!” (Yes, people said that to me.)

The second and third and so-on generation post WW2 are all in deep-dogma-drunken trouble.

One day I met the mother of a girl I dug. Every time I saw the mother, which was usually late afternoon or early evening, she was sitting on a rocker chair on her porch and drinking from a gallon bottle of white wine. In hindsight the mother was a very surreal encounter. While her daughter provided the obligatory tardiness for our date, I tried to spark up a conversation about our newly elected president, Ronald Regan, for whom I had just voted.

“Ah, you wasted your time,” she said. “Well let me tell you something, young man,” she continued after another gulp of wine. “When people like that can even run for office, it’s time to question whether your vote actually counts. He was a god-damn two bit actor! Have you ever even seen one of his movies? No. Well, I have. He was awful. Looks like one of them perverted Catholic priests in every one of his movies. And he made movies with monkeys! And that Jerri Falwell guy loves him. Don’t you think that’s weird! Watch out for those religious people – they all will run you to the ground if they know that you think for yourself. And because you’re going out with my daughter I know you do that. It’s the new ball-n-chain world we live in. Say,” gulp, gulp, gulp. “Do you even believe in God?”
“Uh…”
“Let me put it to you this way,” she abruptly continued. “If there really is a God – then he’s vengeful and laughs at our misery. Now. You make sure my daughter is back in this house by midnight.”

Mothers.

Wow. During the whole date that night all I could think about was the fact that I just met an adult – yes, they were all drunk – that questioned two of the “freedoms” I thought were unquestionable: religion and voting. Needless to say her daughter was a blast. Never before had I had conversation with someone about life, love and being American and I knew that my date got that from her mother. I had one or two more experiences where I didn’t mind waiting for my date to be a half hour late. Shame that the daughter and the mother abruptly moved away from the neighborhood and it’s no wonder why. They were free thinkers. Sadly, I realized, even though I loved her with all my heart and with every breath, my mother wasn’t a free thinker. I was stuck.

By the time I was in college in the eighties it was clear to me why no one saw what was coming. College was the same as the neighborhood. Everybody walked along the same sidewalks day-in and day-out except for “Sunday” when each could take their rotten soul comforting denomination tangents. The only thing people did was try to fit in – so they would eventually be able to do nothing but buy stuff. I guess. Hence the self-perpetuating culture of misery that I was stuck in and, before life could even get started, it was all costing me a small student-loan fortune. I’m not sure, but if someone bothers to give it a good scientific look someday, I think there are at least two generations of Americans that have now attended college and yet they are no better off then, let’s say, the people who were struggling to make it when America was still forming prior to industrialization.

Gee, how many votes and “prayers” have been wasted in America?

I feel today more than ever before deep in my saddened and tearful bones that religion has ruined America. It should now be every Americans main task to read up on the history of the founding fathers and see what they all meant when they, at the least, tried to create a secular government. I’m sure they did that so that people could have religion. But things are just out of hand right now. It’s time to get religion out of the US government. But in no way do I advocate that people give up their belief system. That would be against “freedom”. When I say get rid of religion, I mean get it out of that which governs our lives. Let religion govern your soul, your heart, if you must. But let an objective, secular government run the country. Put religion back where it belongs: in your private life, your church, with your friends and fellow believers, or in your bedrooms. Let your beliefs help others and let the judgment of your efforts shine with merit only – not with rhetoric or church donations. I have given up religion and am relieved to have done so and now it’s time – because it is probably too late! - to take a step back, realize the wrong-doing, and look at what is actually going on in the name of religion.

Please, don’t pray for me. Just wake the fuck up.

I want to thank Richard Dawkins’ for his book and especially making it available to me so cheaply. In all of the failure of my life – if you review some of this blog you’ll see that there’s more failure than anything else – there has been only one thing holding me back from truly expressing myself – especially in the things I write. When I decided to leave America it wasn’t because I thought the grass was greener. I left it because I knew, as a free thinking individual, no matter what I did, no matter how many degrees I would acquire, I was never gonna make it if I didn’t adhere to and propagate the religious-cult-like-world that I was forced to live in. Being the product of a drunk arrogant GI and a naively beautiful young German girl, and having the privilege of being reared in a great country, is a cool mix for free thinking. But that doesn’t seem compatible with the greed and exclusion culture that is religious hypocrisy.

I’m more than willing to accept the sad and poor death that awaits me. At least believing that my choice not to believe, especially when one takes a sincere and rational look at what is currently happening in the world today, is the only rational human choice to make. Yeah. Fail on I will, brethren!

Before I stop this silliness and ranting, let me repeat. I do not want those who find solace and comfort in believing in a God to stop what they are doing. But you should at least, for the sake of life and liberty and freedom of the human soul, try to see what religion is doing to the world. Dawkins is not the Devil nor is he a nut. He’s just an arrogant, elitist scientist that makes money by sharing what he knows – and he knows a fuckin’ bunch!

Rant on.

-tgs-

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