I know that I haven't updated Ebon Musings very often these past few months, but now that all my wedding-related activities are over and done with, I hope to change that. I have several topics in mind that I intend to write new essays about, probably later this year. In the meantime, as a promissory note, I'm proud to announce that we have three new deconversion stories - all of them excellent. Two came to me courtesy of commenters on Daylight Atheism, while the third was completely unsolicited (but no less welcome for that).

And without further ado, here they are:

• Five Year Mistake, by Anonymous

• The Prodigal Daughter, by Adele

• Finding Freedom in Calculus, by Melissa

Thanks to all three of these brave atheists for writing about their experiences!

As always, new deconversion stories are welcome. If you have one you'd like me to publish, please send it to me (either in e-mail, or even in a comment here) and I'll be glad to consider it.

This is an open thread. What's on your mind?

Daniel Dennett recently published a fascinating study on nonbelieving clergy: pastors and ministers from various denominations, both liberal and conservative, who've either lost their faith or hold beliefs that they know their superiors would condemn as highly unorthodox. Naturally, these people remain in the closet, often getting up before their congregations every week to preach beliefs that they no longer hold to themselves.

It's easy to condemn this as hypocritical - and indeed, one of the ministers freely applies that word to himself - but I also feel sympathy for these people. Imagine how wrenching their dilemma is: in most cases, they went into the ministry with the best of intentions, starting out sincerely believing the things they preached. But over time, and usually very much against their will, their beliefs changed. Now what can they do? Admitting their doubts and resigning would mean losing not only their current job, but giving up the prospect of every job for which they're qualified. Ministers who live in a parsonage would lose not only their job, but their home. Even more, a pastor's entire social circle tends to be within their church, so admitting how they feel could mean losing all their friends and their community. In some cases, even their wives and families aren't aware of their changed views.

What I found most interesting about the study was its glimpse into the psychological defense mechanisms used by pastors in this position. Often, they make a conscious effort to avoid spreading their doubts to others:

And I said, 'One of the fears is that I'm going to sway you, and you're going to lose your faith. If I see that happening, I'll back off.'" [p.15]

"Well, I'm not going to go on a campaign to try to convince people to become an atheist. It's my journey.... Everybody has their own journey; and this is my journey." [p.20]

Another is that most don't openly apply the word "atheist" to themselves, even when it's clear that that's what they are. Or they still prefer to use the word "God" in some manner, often just as a poetic metaphor (even while they know that their congregation will interpret it very differently).

"I think my way of being a Christian has many things in common with atheists as [Sam] Harris sees them. I am not willing to abandon the symbol 'God' in my understanding of the human and the universe. But my definition of God is very different from mainline Christian traditions yet it is within them. Just at the far left end of the bell shaped curve." [p.3]

"The difference between me and an atheist is basically this: It's not about the existence of God. It's: do we believe that there is room for the use of the word 'God' in some context? And a thoroughly consistent atheist would say, 'No. We just need to get over that word just like we need to get over concepts of race. We quit using that word, we'd be better off.' Whereas I would say I agree with that in a great many cases, but I still think the word has some value in some contexts." [p.5]

As Dennett and his coauthor, Linda LaScola, observe:

The ambiguity about who is a believer and who a nonbeliever follows inexorably from the pluralism that has been assiduously fostered by many religious leaders for a century and more: God is many different things to different people, and since we can't know if one of these conceptions is the right one, we should honor them all. This counsel of tolerance creates a gentle fog that shrouds the question of belief in God in so much indeterminacy that if asked whether they believed in God, many people could sincerely say that they don't know what they are being asked. [p.2]

I think all these traits - the reluctance to persuade others, the desire to keep using the word "God" symbolically - are an artifact of a time before the atheist movement. Many of these pastors, even though they're nonbelievers, seem to still believe at some level that atheism is a bad or blameworthy position, which is why they try so hard to avoid spreading their doubts to other people they know. And without a philosophical and social framework to claim as their own, they express themselves by using the language they've always been taught, since that's what makes them most comfortable.

As part of expanding the secular community, I think we in the atheist movement should offer a safe harbor for these people. If we can provide a more fitting social and philosophical context for them to define themselves in terms of, they'll be more comfortable calling themselves what they are and not clinging to empty god-talk. And if we can make it financially possible for them to walk away from religion, they'll have more incentive to be honest with themselves and their congregations. There are already niches like this - running a secular community center, working for an atheist-themed charity, writing books that defend freethought views, or lobbying on behalf of secular groups - and as the atheist movement expands, there will be more. In many cases, these former pastors will have organizational and rhetorical skills that we need, so this will be a win-win deal. Just look at how much good it's done us to have people like Dan Barker!

By Sarah Braasch

In Loving Memory of My Baby Brother, Jacob Michael Braasch (01/28/86 – 02/02/10)

I was working on this piece when I received news that my beloved youngest brother, Jacob, had taken his own life by hanging himself in my parents' basement.

I was ten, almost eleven when my mother told me and my brother and sister that she was pregnant again. I didn't speak to her for weeks. I was a good little Jehovah's Witness girl back then, but I'm pretty sure that the present day equivalent of my little ten-year-old interior diatribe would be something like, "You stupid bitch."

Our family was on the verge of cracking open and oozing out onto the ground like a rotten egg. "Was she trying to drive my abusive father to killing us all?" I asked myself. Our financial situation left something to be desired as well. The last thing we needed was the introduction of another stressor, another mouth to feed and another victim. I was so angry that I couldn't find the words to express my rage, so I just stopped speaking.

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. And, my baby brother was born. If by born you mean torn out of my mother's body as a corpse before being brought back to life by a team of doctors. I remember assembling in the school library to watch the news footage of the Challenger exploding in the sky. I remember feeling numb.

I had been so overexposed to constant violence and the constant of impending catastrophe. My Book of Bible Stories was replete with images of apocalyptic mayhem and destruction. I was in full anticipation of being torn from limb to limb by demons at any moment. And, I lived my life in constant terror of my father's fickle and vindictive temper. I didn't have anything left to give to the Challenger. My entire world was exploding in a ball of fire.

When I was told that the state had taken custody of my baby brother, I thought, "If only I could be so lucky." He had needed an immediate life-saving blood transfusion at the moment he came into this world. Of course, my parents refused. Jehovah's Witnesses view blood as sacred and blood transfusions as a mortal sin against Jehovah God. So, the hospital called a judge in the middle of the night, and my baby brother became a ward of the state.

I blamed my mother. I blamed her for everything. She didn't protect her children from abuse, so it seemed fitting that her body would try to kill my baby brother in the womb rather than try to nourish and protect him.

I decided that all of our woes were the result of the fact that my parents were terrible and sinful Jehovah's Witnesses. They were not strong in the Truth. My father's only interest in Scripture was as justification for his maltreatment of his children. He rarely attended Kingdom Hall meetings, and he never went out in service, i.e. going door-to-door, witnessing the Good News. My mother was not the Jehovah's Witness she should have been. But, I would be.

My martyr/savior complex reared its ugly head. I decided to show them up. I would be the best Jehovah's Witness ever. I would keep our house together. I would take care of my siblings. I would be such a good little Jehovah's Witness girl that Jehovah would not only protect me from demons, he would protect me from my own parents.

I enjoyed the feeling of spiritual superiority. I couldn't smite my parents, but God could and would. One day. And, I would save my siblings too. And, we would make new lives for ourselves in an earthly paradise in the new system of things after judgment day, free from our parents' abuse.

While my mother and my baby brother remained in the hospital, I became the mistress of the house. I cooked and I cleaned and I washed clothes. I made sure that my other siblings got to school in the morning. I took care of and fed all of the pets. I worked and I scrubbed and I toiled. And, I imagined that Jehovah was looking down on me from heaven, utterly enamored by my righteousness.

One day, my father said something cruel to me. He said something cruel, but of no great or particular import. He said something about the condition of his eggs. He said something about my obligation to serve him. I don't know why exactly, but, in that moment, I lost my faith. Or, I started to lose my faith. But, not just my faith in God, not just my faith in Jehovah, not just my faith in the Jehovah's Witnesses or the tenets of their religion or their governing organization, but in humanity.

I turned off the stovetop, and I slammed the iron skillet down hard. I realized in that moment that no one loved me. I realized that my father viewed me as something of a dispensable and replaceable slave, as divinely sanctioned by Jehovah. I realized that my mother viewed me as the property of her husband. I realized that I was storing up spiritual riches in an imaginary heaven for a just future that would never come.

I screamed in anguish at my father without regard to the consequences. I wasn't really upset by my father's thoughtlessness. I was heartbroken. I had lost my God. Jehovah had abandoned me.

I screamed at my father to cook his own eggs, wash his own clothes and clean his own house. I expected to be backhanded, but nothing happened. I think he was in shock at the force of my rage. I stormed off to my bedroom, threw myself on my bed and sobbed into my pillow. I had never felt so alone. No one was going to save me.

I sunk into a deep depression. My insides were turning into poisonous, black lead. My limbs felt heavy. It was difficult to move. I was less than enthused when my father announced that we were all going to visit my mother and baby brother in the hospital.

I sat in my mother's hospital room. I gazed out the window at the inky black night. I wondered if I would be able to break the glass, if I threw the full weight of my tiny form against the window. I imagined myself crashing through the window and plummeting to the sidewalk below.

I glowered at my mother. She felt the full force of my rage. The sight of her disgusted me. I wanted to hit her. At first she looked at me with incredulity, but her expression quickly morphed into disdain, then irritation and, finally, anger. I wanted to provoke her. I wanted to anger her. I wanted to impose my presence upon her consciousness. I wanted to force her to react to me, to recognize my existence, my humanity.

My father looked at me with more love in that moment than he ever had, either before or since. He looked at me as a kindred spirit, a pained and tortured soul. I understood him as no one else ever had or ever could. I understood everything he had endured during his childhood. I understood his feelings of desperate helplessness. I understood both his longing and disgust for human affection and connection and intimacy. He had made me in his image. I was his baby Frankenstein, an emotional aggregate of all of his childhood traumas and hurts. And, he loved me for it. I was his little girl with rosy cheeks engorged with the blood of impotent fury.

My mother kept harassing him and tugging at his sleeve. "Get her out of here," she said. "I can't take this. I can't stand her right now. Get her out of here. I can't even look at her."

I just kept glowering at her underneath a furrowed brow with my chin tucked into my chest. I felt nothing but the purest, most unadulterated hatred for her.

The more hatred that oozed from my pores, the more love I felt radiating from my father's form.

He responded to my mother, "She's fine. Just leave her alone. She's fine."

My mother kept clutching at my father's sleeve and nagging him to remove me. But, he refused. He was kind to her, but unrelenting. My mother shot me a look of absolute hatred. My father had betrayed her. He had taken my side. The only time he had ever done so. He had protected me from her.

I finally understood why my mother allowed my father to abuse her children. She didn't care. She didn't love us at all. And, worse than that, not only did she not love us, she saw us as a threat, as competition for our father's affections. In that moment, I think my mother would have enjoyed watching my father strangle me.

I wasn't concerned about antagonizing my mother. She had dabbled in physical abuse when we were little, but that was no longer her modus operandi. And, at the moment at least, I had my father in my hip pocket.

Our father finally suggested that we leave my mother to sleep while we visited our new baby brother in the ICU.

When I was little, I loved hospitals. I loved staying in the hospital when I had my tonsils removed. I loved being doted upon and cared for by the doctors and nurses. I loved being away from my parents. I envied Jacob.

He was bloated and his skin was a putrid shade of yellow. He looked like a little corpse, as if he had drowned and been plucked from the water a couple days later. He was encased in a tomb-like, clear plastic incubator. He was covered with tubing – in his little arms and legs, in his mouth. Every one of his breaths seemed to require a monumental effort on the part of his tiny body.

We took turns putting our gloved hands through the holes in the side of the incubator, so that we could gently stroke his little bloated body. He grabbed my finger with his little hand.

I tried to communicate with him telepathically. I tried to tell him not to fight quite so hard to live. I tried to tell him not to be in such a hurry to get out of this place. I tried to tell him that the world is cruel and loveless and might not be worth the trouble.

In my mind, I said to him, "I would trade places with you, if I could, you poor, stupid baby. You poor, stupid baby." But, I could see that he was fixed upon surviving.

And, then I decided to save him. And, I fell in love with him. I focused my attention on his little fingers clasped around my index finger, and I thought, "I will protect you. I will love you. I will take care of you. I promise. Everything is going to be ok, baby."

I had a reason to live again.

I recently finished Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready!, a book exploring of Christian pop culture and some of its stranger manifestations, from theme parks like Florida's Holy Land Experience to the Ultimate Christian Wrestling pro circuit (no joke). But one event that he paid special attention to was Cornerstone, a Woodstock-like Christian music festival held each year in Illinois that routinely draws hundreds of acts and tens of thousands of people. According to Radosh, Cornerstone had a more open, authentic feeling than most of the events and festivals he attended, and was more welcoming of different perspectives than other Christian gatherings where all attendees are expected to march in lockstep with the religious right's political platform.

Radosh had this to say about the person whom he felt best summed up the Cornerstone ethic:

If there is a quintessential Cornerstone artist, it is probably David Bazan, who played the festival for the better part of a decade with the band Pedro the Lion. Among the qualities that made Bazan such an important figure here was not only the depth of his talent, but the fact that he actually had more credibility in the secular world than the Christian one. Bazan had been raised in a strict Pentecostal household, but had grown into the kind of Christian who treasures the Jesus who freed his followers from religious rules. In the book Body Piercing Saved My Life [get it? —Ebonmuse], Bazan describes his Cornerstone gigs - one of his last remaining attachments to the Christian culture industry - as missionary work... [p.175]

However, he did note that Bazan wasn't at the festival the year he attended (the book was published in 2008), and speculation was running rampant as to why. Some people guessed that he had been kicked off the grounds due to his habit of drinking during his sets (Cornerstone is officially a dry festival), or that he had gotten fed up with festival organizers hassling him about it, or that he had been disinvited because of the occasional cursing in his songs.

Well, as it turns out, the truth is rather different:

I worked as Bazan's publicist from 2000 till 2004. When I ran into him in April — we were on a panel together at the Calvin College Festival of Faith & Music in Grand Rapids — I hadn't seen him or talked to him in five and a half years. The first thing he said to me was "I'm not sure if you know this, but my relationship with Christ has changed pretty dramatically in the last few years."

He went on to explain that since 2004 he's been flitting between atheist, skeptic, and agnostic, and that lately he's hovering around agnostic...

Bazan's latest album, Curse Your Branches, is a confessional chronicle of his deconversion and the personal turmoil he went through as a result. Somewhat surprisingly, he returned to Cornerstone in 2009 to play some songs from it. According to the article, it met with a cautious reception - Bazan's fans from his evangelical days were still drawn to his music, but most of them didn't want to admit he had changed his mind and invented elaborate rationalizations for how his lyrics could be fitted into a Christian worldview. Nevertheless, the fact of his deconversion was widely known, even if not widely acknowledged.

Bazan himself, however, appears to have come to terms with the change in his beliefs and is far more at peace than he ever was:

After a long few years in the wilderness, Bazan seems happy — though he's still parsing out his beliefs, he's visibly relieved to be out and open about where he's not at. "It's more comfortable for me to be agnostic," he says. "There's less internal tension by far — that's even with me duking it out with my perception of who God is on a pretty regular basis, and having a lot of uncertainty on that level. For now, just being is enough. Whether things happen naturally, completely outside an author, or whether the dynamics of earth and people are that way because God created them — or however you want to credit it — if you look around and pay attention and observe, there is enough right here to know how to act, to know how to live, to be at peace with one another."

And David Bazan isn't the only Christian entertainer who's recently walked away from religion. Another interesting example is from the Coexist Comedy Tour, featuring stand-up comedians from a variety of different faiths. Except as it turns out, John Ross, who was the Christian member of the troupe, isn't a Christian anymore either.

Ross embraced Christianity enthusiastically. He taught youth groups, toured the nation with Christian punk rockers Anguish Unsaid and even got religious tattoos. (The dove on his calf and the "Jesus" in Japanese kanji on his neck now act as sight gags onstage.)

"From the beginning I had questions," Ross said, "but I would just write them off with 'Our understanding is not God's understanding.' Until the last few years. It's hard to keep doing that."

By Ross' account, he converted to Christianity as a means of escape from a broken and chaotic family, gravitating towards the stability that the evangelical church offered. But eventually, he realized that faith had only provided a way to sweep his problems and doubts under the carpet; it hadn't actually gotten rid of them. With that realization in hand, he had the key to freedom, and like David Bazan, he's found a new sense of peace and tolerance for himself:

Having left Christianity, Ross is surprised by how little has changed. "I'm still just as compassionate towards people," he explained. "I'm not going out and living in sin." The only difference "is that I don't feel guilty anymore," he says. "There's no war in my head."

It's worth wondering if the use of irony, which plays a vital role in both good music and good comedy, may have been a factor in both these deconversions. Evangelicalism is a creed built on certainty and on having all the answers, and many evangelical believers insist, or fear, that to doubt or to question any tenet of their faith could bring the whole thing crashing down (something we've seen demonstrated recently). But the nature of music (at least, music more sophisticated than bland, one-note Christian pop), and certainly the nature of comedy, requires self-doubt, introspection, and self-questioning. When these collide with the brittle certainties of fundamentalism, stories like these may be the inevitable result.

By Sarah Braasch

I'm scared to expose myself like this. But, I'm tired of the shame and the guilt and the fear. I have something important to say. And, I want to comfort other victims of religious abuse who feel alone and afraid.

I grew up in an abusive Jehovah's Witness home. When people ask me what my childhood was like, I usually describe it, in all seriousness, as something like growing up in a war zone. I don't mean to belittle or demean the experiences of children who actually grow up in literal war zones, but I struggle to find a more apt description.

The sky was always falling. We were constantly under threat of demonic attack. We expected Armageddon to befall us at any moment. As children, these threats of annihilation all around us were all too real. Demons could murder you, rape you and torture you, psychologically or physically or sexually. The desire for the death and destruction of mankind permeated the doctrine. Of course, this theater of horrors was exacerbated and intensified by my father's abuse and my mother's deranged denial.

I cried through my entire high school graduation ceremony. It became a joke amongst my classmates. It was the strangest thing. I just couldn't stop crying. I think I just couldn't believe that I had made it, that I was free. I was just so overwhelmed with emotion.

My father's parting words to me were to tell me that I would amount to nothing without him. He told me that I would come crawling back to him on hands and knees, begging him to take me in. I told him to wait for me. And to hold his breath.

It was a battle to finish my undergraduate education. If I hadn't gone to family court at sixteen to get a restraining order against my father, I wouldn't have been able to secure the financial aid necessary to continue my studies. I had to present a copy of the order to the university to establish myself as financially independent from my parents.

Also, I was in a tremendously fragile emotional and psychological condition. I had severed all ties with my family. I was socially retarded. I was completely alone. I felt totally disconnected from the university community. Interpersonal interactions were difficult and uncomfortable for me. I had trouble making eye contact. And, I thought demons were stalking me.

Being alone in the university dormitory during school breaks was the hardest. I would sit up all night in the lobby watching TV and chatting with the overnight security guards, and I would sleep all day. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone what was happening to me, and my childhood had been nothing if not a study in secrecy. But, I willed myself to keep it together, to go to class, to work, to do research. I presented as normal a face as possible to the outside world. I gravitated towards other outsiders and social pariahs. The goth transvestite with pet snakes. The bisexual Jamaican dancer.

So, at 22 years old, I had spent five years at the University of Minnesota. I had two summa cum laude engineering degrees, in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I had a French minor. Somehow, some way, I made it through. The world was, seemingly, my oyster.

I decided to continue my education. It just seemed like a good idea. If education was good, then more education was even better. I was racking up prizes and awards and scholarships and fellowships and internships and whatever other honors I could get my hands on. I wanted medals and certificates and esteem. Mostly esteem.

I was fueled by rage and hatred. Hatred and rage. It was driving me forward, relentlessly. But no amount of accomplishments or successes could sate me. I was on a mission for revenge and retribution and justice. But, it was not to be found. I was playing a chess game against my parents, except that I was playing a chess game against no one, because my parents weren't playing, because they didn't care.

That was the cruelest lesson of my twenties. I realized that my parents were not sitting up nights worrying about my wellbeing or lack thereof. My parents were not racked with guilt over their mistreatment of me. My mother and my father were continuing their lives as if they didn't have a care in the world, as if they'd never had a little girl named Sarah.

I couldn't even hurt them. They didn't care. My success was not the best revenge or any revenge at all. My success was meaningless to them. They didn't care. I had to let it go. Their gas-lit alternate reality didn't include me, or even a notion of me or even the idea of me. My anger and bitterness was going to destroy me and no one would care.

I headed off to grad school at UC Berkeley. The moment I landed, everything came crashing down. Something inside of me snapped. It surprised me. I wouldn't have thought it would have occurred then. I was further removed from all of my torments, both geographically and temporally. But, all of my demons were still with me — in my head.

I couldn't sleep. I was terrified of the dark. I spent my nights sitting in the bathtub, searching out the corners of the well-lit bathroom for demons. I would pray to Jehovah throughout the night, in an almost chant-like fashion. I did this to ward off the demons, to call upon Jehovah for protection, and to stop the bad thoughts. If I cursed Jehovah God in my head or asked for Satan, I would scream and cry out to Jehovah to save me. Then, I would begin chanting again. Sometimes, a part of my brain knew that what I was doing was crazy, but I couldn't stop. And, sometimes, I didn't know. Sometimes, I knew that there was a demon there, torturing me, trying to hurt me, trying to get me to kill myself.

I stopped going to class. I stopped going to the lab. I stopped bathing. I spent my days either sleeping or writing out rambling tales of demons and demonic possession. I had a complete nervous breakdown.

In a rare moment of lucidity, I realized that I was either going to drive myself totally and irrevocably insane, or that I was going to drive myself to suicide. I knew it. I had to choose.

There was something alluring about letting the insane parts of my mind just take me, just pull me out to sea and drown me in darkness. I wanted to completely disassociate from reality. Insanity would obviate the need for suicide. Suicide was scary. I had no fear of hell. (Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in hell.) But, I had grown weary of violence. I didn't really want to inflict more violence upon my poor, tired body. But, I decided that my insanity wouldn't be a happy or peaceful place. My insanity would be hell, full of pain and anguish. If I had thought that my insane mind would have taken me to a dreamy heaven, full of cotton candy and angels and down-filled cushions, I would have gone.

I wasn't sure if I could still extract joy from life. I wasn't sure if I could find meaning in life. I wasn't sure if I could determine a purpose for my life. But, I decided to try. I decided I needed drugs.

I headed to the student health center on campus. I told the staff psychiatrist how I was feeling about my tenuous grasp on reality, my views on demons and my thoughts of suicide, and he gave me drugs. Lots of drugs.

The drugs worked. I was walking through life in a hazy fog, but I liked it. I could sleep at night. I didn't think about demons all of the time, but they never left me completely. I went to class. I went to the lab. My productivity left something to be desired. I had been drained of any semblance of a personality. I even spoke really slowly. I gained a lot of weight. I was kind of like the walking dead. But, I was alive. Sort of. And, I could function. Kind of.

I got it in my head that I needed to leave Berkeley. I grew tired of living like a zombie. As often happens, I decided that I didn't need the drugs anymore. I decided that I just needed a new environment, a change of pace. So, I left. I took the first job offer I could find, and I moved to Los Angeles. Things were going ok for a while. Then, I decided to save my siblings. With tragic consequences.

I basically strong-armed my older sister and my younger brother into moving out to Los Angeles and into moving in with me. I had grandiose visions of bestowing new lives upon them, of blessing them with new horizons, of freeing them from the shackles of our hellish family and childhoods. I would be their savior. (And, I hoped it would irk my parents to no end.)

This ill-formed plan, of course, quickly turned catastrophic. Three emotionally damaged and traumatized adult siblings living in close quarters and grappling with reconstructing their lives and identities is a recipe for disaster. Trust me on this one. Things quickly spiraled out of control.

My sister was the first to abandon ship. She saw the light before I did. When my sister left so did any hope we had of building a functional family out of the shards of our broken lives and psyches. She was the sane one. My brother and I descended into a co-dependent psychodrama hell of childhood trauma revisited.

I became cruel to him. He embodied all of my worst fears. He couldn't get out of bed. He imploded in on himself. I couldn't allow that to happen. I forced him to get a job. I forced him to pay rent. I forced him to clean. I was all about the tough love.

He became more and more detached from reality. He would stay out all night, wandering the streets of LA. He would tell me that he had broken into people's homes. He brought home swords, which I quickly re-gifted. He would tell me that he saw a girl, whom he knew from back home, at the restaurant where he worked. He thought he might have raped her during a drug binge. He told me that she sat at the bar and stared at him without saying a word. He told me that she had come to LA to tell him that she was pregnant. He told me that he could hear the thoughts of the customers at work. He could hear them thinking about him, laughing at him. He told me that the patrons in the restaurant were always talking about him, making fun of him. He told me that he often met and saw demons as he wandered LA in the middle of the night. He told me that he challenged Satan to a fight.

I knew he was schizophrenic, but I thought I could talk him out of it. I know it sounds ridiculous. He would have moments of lucidity. I would try to reason with him, to get him to see the distinction between reality and psychosis, to teach him how to recognize the difference.

Then, one night, my brother snapped. He was asking me pointed questions about whether or not my sister and I had been sexually abused by our father. And, I was giving him pointed answers. He responded violently. I had to call the police. I was never afraid of him until that point. I probably should have been, but I wasn't. Even when he told me he was hearing voices and seeing demons, even when he brought home swords.

The next day, I kicked him out. I gathered up all of his belongings after he left for work, and I dropped them off at the restaurant. And, I've never forgiven myself. But, I was scared. I panicked. I was afraid that he would kill or rape or hurt me if I let him stay. Eventually, he made his way back to the Midwest.

My brother is currently being heavily medicated, so that he does not pose a danger either to himself or to anyone else. I tried to save him, but I drowned him instead.

When I think about my brother, I think about how he held me as I cried out my testimony against my father in family court, about how my words became sobs, about how he put his arm around me. And, I hate myself for abandoning him.

Religious abuse exists. Religious abuse is real. Who knows how many unacknowledged walking wounded limp through early adult life, struggling to put themselves back together again. Of course, there are varying degrees and types of religious abuse, just as there are varying degrees and types of sexual and physical abuse. Religious abuse is a form of psychological abuse. As a society, we are loath to acknowledge this fact. We are loath to acknowledge that raising children in religion is abusive.

We are sending millions of young persons out into the world handicapped by religious childhood traumas and indoctrination and social retardation, including religious idiocy, delusion and hatred. For the greater part, these psychological and emotional pains remain unaddressed by our mental health profession. Religion is not addressed as the prime mover.

I am not an aberration. I am your high school friend. I am your co-worker. I am your law school classmate.

I am not unintelligent. I am not crazy. I have two engineering degrees and a law degree. I have traveled the world. I am well educated and well read. I am a human rights activist. I am a writer.

I am an adult survivor of childhood religious abuse. And, so are you.

By Sarah Braasch

In the early 80's, the primary preoccupations of the Jehovah's Witnesses were Armageddon, Smurfs, Michael Jackson and demonic attack, but not necessarily in that order. As a young Jehovah's Witness girl, my worldview was what you might describe as surreal. Smurfs were little blue imps disguised as Saturday morning cartoon characters. They were capable of murder, rape, violence and general mayhem, and, as such, all Smurf paraphernalia had to be either banished or burned or both from any respectable Jehovah's Witness home. Armageddon was regarded with frenzied anticipation. We couldn't wait for the bloodletting of the wicked to begin. Demons roamed the earth, along with Satan the Devil. They lurked behind every corner, literally, just waiting for an invitation to wreak havoc on one's mind and body. And Michael Jackson was the subject of many rancorous sermons at the Kingdom Hall. Michael Jackson and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom replaced the Smurfs as the most blatant signs of the end times, the last days of this system of things.

I didn't know whom Michael Jackson was when I began to hear his name breathlessly bandied about with great agitation and interspersed amongst the cautionary tales of Smurfs and demon-possessed antiques. I knew I didn't have any of his tapes or records. I felt much relieved. When news of the Smurfs' demonic nature had come to light, I had to rid my bedroom of Smurfs, and I wasn't able to sleep for months thereafter. I was convinced I had inadvertently invited demons into my life.

Apparently there was something quite different about this Michael Jackson. He had been one of us. He had been a Jehovah's Witness. This information blew my little mind. What?!? How could a Jehovah's Witness do the horrible things the elders accused Michael Jackson of having done? How could someone abandon Jehovah God after having learned the truth? Was he demon possessed?

We were given explicit instructions in how to handle the Michael Jackson situation. He was definitely NOT a Jehovah's Witness. We were told to deny him. A Jehovah's Witness would not do the things he did. A Jehovah's Witness is not merely someone who claims the identity. A Jehovah's Witness must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. A Jehovah's Witness demonstrates his identity via his behavior. Michael Jackson might have attended a few meetings. His mother might be a Jehovah's Witness, but that did not make Michael Jackson a Jehovah's Witness. Deny, deny, deny. We were read an official letter from the governing body of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in New York.

All of this commotion was very exciting and titillating. We had a betrayer in our midst. He was the purveyor of worldly sex and sin and demonic imagery. We secretly relished the notoriety and the attention his fame brought us. What good was it to be God's chosen people, the only ones with the truth, to be better than everyone else, unless everyone else knew of our superiority? Battle lines were drawn. There was a fight to be had, in the public eye, in the center of a scandalous controversy. It was so delicious.

It was also a matter of life and death and demons. JWs love to whip themselves up into a veritable frenzy. They love to terrorize themselves and their children. Everything is a cosmic battle to the death between the forces of good and evil. Even Smurfs and Michael Jackson and Indiana Jones.

One day I was the odd but accepted fixture of Lincoln Elementary School in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and the next day I was the cool kid. Everyone was jealous of me. Not despite the fact that I was a Jehovah's Witness, but, miraculously, because I was a Jehovah's Witness. That was something new. I was supposed to denounce and disown Michael Jackson, but, suddenly, everyone wanted to know me and be near me, because Michael Jackson was also a Jehovah's Witness. I remember little girls telling me, “You're so lucky, because you're a Jehovah's Witness just like Michael Jackson.” All of the little girls in my grade had huge crushes on him.

I felt torn. I loved the attention and the admiration, but I was terrified of being attacked by demons if I strayed from the organization's instructions. I strived to achieve both aims. I milked the association for all it was worth and denounced his worldly ways at the same time. I convinced myself that I was doing this in order to proselytize to as many of my classmates as possible. That was the other thing. We were told to take advantage of this situation to spread the good news to people who were now open to hearing it.

While I was able to withstand the siren charms of MJ, I knew another little JW girl who was not. My sister and I often played with a little Jehovah's Witness girl named Sandy whose mother was also named Sandy. I found that so strange. I found that to be the height of arrogance for a mother to name her daughter after herself. It seemed almost like self-idolatry. I was both intrigued and aghast.

Their family was particularly devout. They sold their home. They moved into a mobile home to simplify their lives, so that they could devote more of their time to the preaching effort. They gave us their dog, Yickey (some kind of weird Swedish name – only in Minnesota). They didn't want to spend time taking care of a pet that they could spend out witnessing the good news. Sandy and her little brother were not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio without adult supervision. Their every move was monitored.

But, Sandy's and her little brother's parents had both previously been married and divorced. To other people. I was scandalized by this information. Sandy had led a pre-Jehovah's Witness life. Her family's righteousness was newfound. Sandy had a hard time conforming to her newly strict and ascetic lifestyle. She had a secret life in which she indulged in wicked worldliness. But, just a little bit. I was both repelled with fear and disgust and wholly enthralled by more than a little fear and disgust.

Sandy and I bonded over this shared attraction to the dark side. My mother had not been a JW until she married my father. As such, she was far more lenient than most Jehovah's Witness mothers regarding our daily activities. I was probably worse the wear for it. It almost made me Catholic, the extreme guilt that I felt. But, it was even worse, because my guilt was coupled with sheer terror, because I was certain that I was deserving of demonic attack.

One day at Sandy's house, she led my sister and I into her bedroom to exchange confidences and demon attack horror stories. Then, she revealed her deep and abiding love for, of all things, Michael Jackson. I think I might have shrieked. Then, she opened up the top drawer of her dresser and flung her undergarments onto her bed, revealing a huge stash of Michael Jackson pictures that she had cut from the pages of magazines and whatnot. How she had escaped her mother's watchful eye long enough to do so was beyond me. Pictures of Michael Jackson in concert. Pictures of Michael Jackson in his videos. Pictures of Michael Jackson posing for photo shoots. She handed some of the images to my sister and I.

I didn't want to touch the photos. I was literally terrified. It was as if she had pulled voodoo dolls or a Ouija board out from her dresser. Nothing is more terrifying to Jehovah's Witnesses than the Satanic Ouija board. I thought demons were going to appear at any moment. I thought I was being possessed at that moment. I almost fainted. I started to cry. My sister looked scared too. I begged her to put the pictures away. Scaring one another with tales of bad Jehovah's Witnesses who had been rightfully tormented by demons was one thing. But, actually inviting demons into our lives was something else entirely. And that's what those pictures were. They were portals to the spiritual world, the evil spiritual world. They were doorways, and demons were waiting on the other side, itching to get in through my fingertips.

It's truly amazing and horrifying how brainwashing and inculcation as a child stays with you throughout your life. I am an adult. I am well educated. I have not been a Jehovah's Witness for many, many years. I am an atheist. Most of the time. But, sometimes, especially when I'm stressed out and tired, I'll start to feel that old sense of panic and anxiety. I'm sure I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I will still call out to Jehovah to protect me from demons, but only every once in a blue moon. And, I feel the need less and less. These moments of psychosis become more and more rare. I'm really looking forward to the time when they will cease altogether, if that ever happens.

I became addicted to the drama. It was such a rush, such a high. A constant battle with demons. The ever-incipient apocalypse. The community wide martyr complex. I sometimes wonder if maybe it permanently damaged my brain. I was constantly pumped full of adrenaline, high on terror, living on a knife's edge, waiting for the next demonic attack.

That lifestyle has maintained its grasp on me in myriad ways. I overreact. I am hyper-emotional. Everything's a matter of life and death. The problem is two-fold. I'm addicted to the rush of chemicals in my body, and I never learned how to distinguish between the real emergency and the fake one. When pictures of Michael Jackson might contain demons, something about your life is slightly skewed.

I fell into something of a depression when Michael Jackson died. I was unbelievably sad. I was embarrassed to tell anyone. I had enjoyed his music, but I had never been a huge fan. I had never purchased any of his albums. I had never seen him in concert. I had never met him, of course. But, his death opened up a lot of childhood wounds. I felt like I knew a part of him. Like I understood in a way that few others would.

I knew the pain of growing up in an abusive Jehovah's Witness home with a subservient and submissive mother and a domineering father. I knew the pain of loving a mother who will not protect you, because she believes that God will condemn her for doing so. The pain of loving a mother who will not leave the man who believes it is within his God-given authority to beat you. The pain of loving a mother who would rather watch you suffer in misery than expose Jehovah God or his organization to public scorn and shame.

Growing up, I loved my mother more than anything, but she didn't love me more than anything. She loved her religion more. It still makes me cry. So when Michael Jackson died, I cried. I cried for the little girl who was terrified that demons were going to rape her in the middle of the night. I cried for the little girl who begged her mother to leave her father. I cried for the little girl who begged Jehovah God to kill her, so that the pain would stop. And, I cried for the little Jehovah's Witness boy that Michael Jackson had been.

I worry about Michael's kids. I know that sounds silly, but I think about them. I hope they are safe and well. I worry that they are being inculcated in that apocalyptic cult of demonology and terror that is the Jehovah's Witnesses. It is not a healthy environment for children. Not to mention the fact that that cult once denounced and disowned their father as wicked and sinful.

I worry about Paris. The Jehovah's Witnesses espouse the subjugation of women and girls as part of Jehovah's divinely ordained plan. Raising children as Jehovah's Witnesses is abusive, especially for girl children. It is also dangerous. The Jehovah's Witnesses provide a safe haven for pedophiles, abusers and molesters. I imagine that Michael Jackson suffered greatly as a result of having been raised as a Jehovah's Witness.

I worry about Katherine Jackson raising those kids as Jehovah's Witnesses. I don't know her. I've never met her. But, I am tired of hearing her spoken of as if she were some kind of saint for remaining with her tyrannical husband all of these years. I am tired of hearing her spoken of as if she were some kind of saint because she's religious, because she's a woman of faith, because she's spiritual.

My mother was spiritual. My mother was a woman of faith. My mother was religious. My mother is still married to my father. They still live together. I haven't spoken to either of them in nearly twenty years.

My mother chose her husband and her religion and her God over her children. She stood by and did nothing as her children suffered at the hands of her husband. She stood by and did nothing as her cult terrorized and tortured her children. She sacrificed us for her faith. She sacrificed us for her loveless marriage.

I got down on my hands and knees and begged my mother to protect me. I begged her to choose me. I begged her to love me. And she said no.

So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't think women should be canonized for holding their faith in higher regard than the protection of their own children. And, I'm not sure they should be rewarded with even more children to neglect in this way.

I don't want Michael's kids to have to beg.

By Sarah Braasch

I think I destroyed someone's faith yesterday. Or, in truth, I think I may have struck the definitive blow. This doesn't bother me. Unlike what many atheists espouse, for fear of being labeled evangelical proselytizers of disbelief, I actively seek the de-conversion of humanity. I actively seek to destroy religion. Not spirituality, but organized religion. I believe that if we do not destroy it, it will destroy us.

And, when I say de-conversion I mean just that. I mean de-conversion, not conversion to an atheist creed or dogma or doctrine, because none exists. Atheism is simply the absence of faith. It is not a similarly blind faith in science or logic or reason or philosophy or individualism or liberal constitutional democracy or anything.

But, I admit, I am feeling some qualms since yesterday. I am struggling through some pangs of conscience since egging on a crisis of conscience.

In order to protect the innocent, I have altered all identifying characteristics.

Amina is a beautiful black French Muslim girl. She is a French citizen, but her family hails from Guinea in West Africa – a former French colony. She speaks Mandinka. She is Mandinka. She also speaks fluent French, decent Arabic, and very little English. She is very proud. She is very religious. She is also very sweet and loving. She would never wish to hurt anyone's feelings, but she does not hesitate to defend her faith, even from the mildest of chastisements. She does not wear the hijab or headscarf. She looks like a typical French teenager in her blue-jeans and t-shirts.

Amina was struggling with the burqa question. She supports women's rights, but she feels the possible ban in France as an attack on her religion and her culture. She doesn't want to think about Islam as inherently misogynistic. She still believes that Islam is God's (Allah's) final revelation to man. She still believes that the Quran is the infallible word of Allah. If Islam is inherently misogynistic, then that means that Allah hates her, because she is a woman. She cannot cope with the dissonance that this creates in her head. She asserts that women absolutely do freely choose to don both the niqab and the burqa as expressions of their love for Allah. She avers that women absolutely do freely choose to fulfill their God given roles as women in Islam according to the Quran.

She asked me what I thought about the potential burqa ban in France. I paused and sighed deeply. She said that it is a difficult question. I agreed.

I told her many things. I told her that I am an atheist. I told her that I abhor all religions as the sexual slavery of women and the psychological torture of children. I told her that I do not believe any of them to be true. I told her that I have read all of the so-called holy books, and that I was not convinced that any of them could have been divinely inspired or dictated. Not in the least. I told her that I think religion must be destroyed in order for humanity to survive.

She told me many things. She told me that she does not think that religion is the problem. She told me that she thinks men pervert and misapply and manipulate religion for their own aims, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, and sometimes disingenuously.

We looked upon one another with the same vaguely supercilious, rather patronizing pity. We felt sorry for one another. I pitied her ignorance and inculcation, and she pitied my ignorance and inculcation. The difference being that I had escaped the iron grasp of a cult through years of struggle and effort. I could fully demonstrate my knowing choice to be free of dogma and superstition.

She told me that she had not read the Bible, but that when she reads the Quran, she knows that she is reading the words of Allah. She spoke of so many of the same arguments one hears by Christians defending the Bible. The alleged way-ahead-of-its-time science in the Quran, including something about salty seawater and fresh ground water, and something about the earth being round, and something about embryology. She spoke of the evil and dissolution of the surrounding societies during Mohammed's time and how Mohammed introduced an as yet unheard of morality. And, she spoke of women's rights. She told me that the Quran lists right after right for women. She told me about the entire chapter on Mary, the mother of Jesus. She told me that men pervert the message of the Quran, but that the Quran itself is perfect.

Needless to say, I was hardly won over by these arguments.

And, even after having told me that she had never read the Bible, she began to compare the Quran to the Bible and disparage the biblical text. Of course, this is neither here nor there to me, as I find both texts equally unconvincing.

She told me that the Bible contradicts itself and is incoherent. I agreed. She then told me that the Quran has a single, singular and coherent message from beginning to end. I was silent.

She told me that the Bible was written and assembled by the clergy. This is why there are so many perversions and errors and mistranslations of God's intended revelation. She told me that there is no clergy in Islam to muddy the waters of the direct conduit between Allah and man, as, originally, there were no intermediaries between Allah and Mohammed (save Gabriel). She proudly proclaimed Mohammed's illiteracy as ostensible proof of the Quran's greater authenticity.

This claim has always left me perplexed. First of all, there is most assuredly a clergy class in Islam. It just isn't referred to as such. (Much in the same way that Muslims do in fact worship Mohammed; they just say that they don't.) In fact I have seen very little evidence of the vaunted ijtihad in Islam, which is individual study and reflection and interpretation. In my opinion, Islamic scholars have a stranglehold on Quranic exegesis and doctrinal interpretation, including the hadiths, Sharia and issuing fatwas. Second of all, the fact that the Quran is allegedly the secondhand account of a series of direct revelations to an illiterate peasant doesn't seem to be much of an improvement over the Bible's divinely inspired theory.

But, I agreed with her arguments regarding the Bible. I saw an opening. I lambasted the Bible and Christianity mercilessly and, in particular, the divinity of Jesus.

I told her that the Bible is ridiculous. She nodded fervently. I told her that the Bible contradicts itself relentlessly. She nodded and smiled assiduously. I told her that the Bible excludes many apocryphal texts, which were left out for this or that reason by men. She nodded and smirked avidly. I told her that the Bible was obviously written by and for men in the pursuit of their earthly preoccupations, namely conquering lands and raping and enslaving women. She nodded forcefully. She beamed. I understood.

I moved on to Jesus. I spoke of the seemingly limitless number of almost identical Sun God myths floating around the Mediterranean and the Middle East for thousands of years before Jesus Christ showed up. She concurred. I spoke of all of the ways in which Jesus' story matches these other Sun God tales of virgin birth, crucifixion and resurrection. She agreed.

I rattled on about the Nicene Creed and the Council of Nicaea and Constantine and the Roman Empire. I spoke of Constantine's desire to unify his empire under a single Christian creed. I spoke of how the divinity of Jesus was brought to a vote at the Council of Nicaea, along with other doctrinal elements of this new religion. And she nodded approvingly and encouraged me.

I spoke about how the gospels were written at the very least 3 or 4 decades after the supposed death of Jesus Christ. How they conflict with one another. How they are plagiarisms of one another. I spoke about how Paul and the other earlier, but still not contemporaneous, biblical authors, wrote not of an earthly man who had been born, lived, performed miracles, preached, and died, but of the same Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Sun God as heavenly archetype as everyone else had done.

Then, I hit her with the punch line. Given all of this information, all of these facts, many, not all, but many scholars do not believe that there is any evidence at all that anyone by the name of Jesus, as described in the Christian Bible, ever existed. Jesus was an archetype. He was an amalgamation of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Sun God myths. Not a single contemporaneous historian ever speaks a word about anyone named Jesus who even comes close to matching the Jesus in the Christian Bible. First century Palestine is a very well documented era and geographic location. Had someone actually been walking around performing miracles, causing turmoil for the Jewish and Roman leadership, been crucified, and, finally, been resurrected, in front of eyewitnesses, someone would have recorded it. Someone. Anyone. But, no one ever did. He never existed at all. No man. No rabbi. No preacher. No traveling salesman. No prophet. No farmer. No leader. There was no Jesus. No one at all.

Her beautiful, proud eyes that had flickered with the fire of her religious conviction fell into a momentary downward glance as she grappled with a fleeting spasm of doubt. I read the doubt on her face, clear as day.

She caught herself after just a moment, just as she was about to fall off the edge of her flat earth. One of her flailing hands caught a shrub, and she was able to pull herself back up to a more secure footing. She became an automaton. She fell back into her rote, prepared spiel. She said, "Me, I believe that he existed. But, he was just a man. I do not believe that he was the Son of God. He was a great teacher."

But the hairline crack of doubt remained in the slight, barely visible furrow of her brow.

I decided to lessen some of her pain. I explained to her that, for the most part, the scholars who believe that there might have been an actual Jesus believe so for a single reason. This reason is the great labors and pains taken to match Jesus' personal history with the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. If there hadn't been an actual Jesus, there would not have been any need to go to such arduous lengths to get him to Bethlehem, for instance, and into the house of David.

I suddenly felt a spasm of guilt. What had I done? Had I tricked her? I knew what I was doing. I had manipulated her. I argued my point in such a way as to lure her into a boxed-in corner. I wasn't upset, because I had caused her to doubt her faith. On the contrary, that was a victory. But, I was upset, because of my methods. I felt slimy and smarmy and unctuous. I felt like a Jehovah's Witness. I was reminded of all of my childhood witnessing tricks of the trade – the specious and disingenuous arguments, the rhetoric gymnastics of semantics and semiotics, the fatuous and fallacious non-logic. I was a little bit disgusted with myself.

But, I hadn't said anything untrue. My only sin was the fact that I knew where my argument was heading, and she did not. Predestination in microcosm. I think I just empathized with her emotional pain. I know it. I knew it. Leaving one's faith can feel like tearing one's self in two.

Then, something occurred to me, which I am sure is no great revelation to anyone else, but it was a tremendous personal revelation.

Jesus is the key. Jesus is the key to destroying the three great monotheisms. Judaism is out of luck. The Messianic ship has sailed. No one in their right mind could ever be made to believe that someone yet to come is the Messiah. Anyone from here on out claiming to be the Anointed One will be sent straight to the loony bin. Unless, of course, some as yet unknown alien civilization attempts to take advantage of our credulity and shows up in a space ship more advanced than our wildest sci-fi fantasies. Islam is a very poorly cobbled together plagiarism of both Judaism and Christianity. Despite their seeming antipathy for one another, Islam is wholly reliant upon the other two. Islam is discredited the second that either or both Christianity and Judaism are discredited. Jesus' existence is the easiest to discredit. There isn't a shred of evidence that he ever existed at all, while there is a mountain of evidence that he was merely a knock off Egyptian Osiris. While Mohammed may have been a bloodthirsty pedophile warlord, he was also an actual flesh and blood human being who managed to hold sway over the minds of thousands upon thousands of credulous souls. But Jesus probably didn't exist at all. Muslims want desperately to concur with all of the criticisms of Jesus, every single one, right up to the point where you say that he didn't exist at all, not even as a lowly man. And, the Quran lives and dies with Jesus. Every word of the Quran is supposedly the infallible word of Allah. The Quran is all about Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Thank you Jesus.

I've posted a link to a new deconversion story on Ebon Musings: "Deconversion as Withdrawal: Just what is this God-smack stuff, anyway?", written by the vivacious and loquacious blogger D of She Who Chatters (whom you may recognize from her comments here on Daylight Atheism).

Having posted this, it occurs to me that I haven't been doing much to solicit deconversion stories for Ebon Musings lately. That's why I'm inviting you, dear reader, to send yours in. Are you an atheist who's broken free of religion and wants to tell the world your story? If so, I want to hear from you!

I'll link to your story if it's hosted elsewhere, but what I'd especially like is to have new stories that I can host on Ebon Musings. If you have a well-written testimonial, or are thinking of writing one, leave a comment or send me an e-mail. I'll read them over and repost the best ones. (If you sent in your story the last time I did this, you're also eligible - let me know if you'd like to see your story reposted on EM.)

In the days before Justice Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, we witnessed a strange spectacle: religious-right Christian after religious-right Christian spoke out against her nomination on the grounds that she valued empathy, and that this was an undesirable quality for a judge to have.

Coming from a religion whose founder supposedly said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," this is laughably absurd. Empathy is one of the founding moral teachings of Christianity, and here we see prominent Christians viciously attacking it. But in a deeper sense, I think this tells us something important. I don't believe attacks on empathy are a temporary position employed by the religious right for political advantage. I think that they're sincere when they claim to detest empathy, and that their abhorrence for it is an essential part of their worldview.

Let me refer again to Dave Schmelzer's Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist. Although Schmelzer's more willing than most to credit atheism for the good it's brought about, he still seems unable to avoid the atheists-are-angry-misanthropes invective that's ubiquitous in Christian apologetics books:

"[T]he tone... in the case of the 'nastiest' atheist writers, at least - does tend toward arrogance and sanctimony. I mean, do these authors seem happy to you? Is that worth noting?" [p.38]

and then there's this classic bit of propaganda, an exchange which he claims happened while he was speaking to an atheist students' club at a local university:

"In my presentation, I had told some inspiring (to me) stories about heroic, faith-driven responses to Hurricane Katrina, so I hazarded, 'To you, then, the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is not so much that so many people were killed or driven away from their homes, families, and community. You're saying that that's no more tragic than, say, whatever damage was done to the coastline.' He agreed with that and pressed his point by saying, 'A person's death and a tree's death should have the same value in the big picture.'" [p.111]

Atheists think humans are no more valuable than trees! (Insert gasp of horror from Christian readers here.)

Call me a skeptic, but I just can't take this story seriously. I think I can say that I'm pretty familiar with what atheists tend to believe, and I've never met or heard of an atheist who believes anything remotely like this. I'm all but certain that Schmelzer has misreported this conversation. It may not have been intentional: knowing what we know about the fallibility of memory, he may have misremembered it in a way that fits with his conception of how atheists think.

What does this have to do with empathy? I'm coming around to that.

Having read countless deconversion stories, I've seen one element that reappears in many of them: the moment when a person, on the brink of losing their faith, begins to see atheism as a genuine possibility, as a live option, and is exhilarated by the thought:

For a few seconds, I was not a religious mind, viewing atheism from behind a plexiglass shield and handling it with industrial gloves, but a neutral mind, considering what the world looked like through both religious and atheistic eyes. For an ephemeral moment, I saw that the anomalies present in my religious perspective dissolved in the light of atheism. (source)

The more time that I spent reading essays by atheists, agnostics and freethinkers/humanists, the more I began to realize with a mixture of both fear and joy that I was thinking more like an unbeliever, similar to before I actually became a Christian approximately seventeen years earlier. I felt a certain kind of excitement building inside of me that was a very freeing experience. (source)

Perhaps more than any strictly intellectual argument, this is the factor that makes you most likely to convert to a given worldview: whether you truly empathize with the people who hold it, whether you can put yourself in their place and understand their reasoning.

The religious right, of course, has no interest in people coming to think this way about any worldview other than their own, which is why they disparage empathy in general. But they're especially terrified of people coming to think this way about atheism. This is why every presentation of atheism in their writing is carefully tailored to horrify ordinary Christians - to depict atheists as evil, immoral misanthropes (people no more important than trees!) whose views are so obviously beyond the pale that they can be dismissed without further reflection.

This is why, if you ask a theist why they think people become atheists, you rarely get an answer other than cartoonish stereotypes like, "They hate God and want to rebel against him." They can't give good answers to this question because they've never thought about it themselves. By design, they specifically steer away from thinking about it.

This is also why proselytizers so often spread the lie that atheists have no basis for morality, and try to blame us for every evil under the sun. I've attacked this falsehood often, but I've come to realize that it's more than a merely factual confusion. We can't just point out that apologists are wrong about this and expect them to stop saying it. They say it because they need to say it - because it's a crucial part of their worldview that atheism be blamed for everything bad that happens, in order to keep their followers safely away from it.

Although we need to keep speaking out against this tactic, it isn't a battle we can win by words alone. As I said, the religious right says this because they need to, because instilling fear of different viewpoints is a vital part of their strategy, and no correction we offer will convince them otherwise. What we need to do is to be visible - be outspoken, be loud and proud, and don't be afraid to introduce ourselves as atheists. The more people get to know us, the more they'll see that religious stereotypes about us have no basis in reality, and the more isolated and ineffectual the people who insist on pushing those stereotypes will become.

This post isn't for confirmed atheists, nor for confirmed theists. It's not for people who've already made up their minds, one way or the other.

No, this post is for the seekers, the in-betweeners, the tormented doubters. It's for the uncertain agnostics, people who aren't certain what they believe; it's for people who feel like they no longer belong in their church, but don't know of an alternative; and it's for people who are experiencing a full-blown crisis of faith and don't know where to turn. If you found this post through a web search, it's probably for you.

There are countless reasons why you might have come to this point. You may feel rejected or unwelcome at your church or your religious community, perhaps because you hold some views that are different from the orthodoxy. You may feel betrayed by a religious leader who turned out to be a hypocrite, or who abused the trust he was given. Or you may feel disappointed with God himself, perhaps because faith doesn't offer the comfort you thought it would, or because promised miraculous help didn't come when you needed it most. You may feel that your prayers aren't being listened to, that there's no one on the other end of the line. But however you came to this point, I'm almost certain that you feel like the only one who's different, the only one who doesn't fit in.

If you're one of these people, I have a message for you: Atheism is an option. You don't have to believe. You don't need to belong to a religion to lead a fulfilling, moral, and happy life. You can be an atheist, and you don't need to feel guilty about it. On the contrary, being an atheist can be a positive achievement to celebrate and take pride in.

The second most important thing I want to say to you, the seekers and the doubters, is this: You are not alone. There are others like you. In fact, there are more of us than you probably think. I've heard from other people who feel the same way, and nearly every prominent atheist I know can say the same. There are people in the pews and even behind the pulpits who no longer believe, but can't say so because they don't want to lose their major source of community, because they fear reprisal, or because they know no other way of making a living. I'd wager it's more common than people think. Like an iceberg whose depths lie below the surface, the number of visible, outspoken atheists might well be dwarfed by the number of those who are still counted as religious only by default.

I have no doubt that you've heard plenty of gloomy and frightening stereotypes about atheists, and I can assure you that they are not true. Atheism is not incompatible with morality, nor does it require hating religious people, nor does it mean a life lacking happiness or meaning. In fact, the journey to atheism can be a wonderful, exhilarating liberation, as many who've walked that road can tell. The only thing being an atheist means is that you don't believe in any gods. In every other respect, you can live your life however you want and be the same person you have always been.

If you're intrigued by these words, or if you're merely curious, there are plenty of resources where you can read and learn more, and numerous online communities - such as this one! - where you can participate.

If you choose to take the plunge and become an atheist, I can't promise that you'll never face misunderstanding, hatred, or prejudice. In fact, depending on where you live and how open you are about it, it's likely that you will. But I and many others can testify that, in the long run, being true to yourself is far more satisfying than trying to live a lie. You don't have to shout your nonbelief to the rooftops, but if you're doubting your religion, consider atheism. You may find it far more fulfilling and liberating than you expect.