Introduction

Hi folks!

First off, welcome to my new blog.  I've been an atheist for nearly eight years now.  Do I have any regrets?  Yeah, my life is just drab and meaningless, and I'm just a random set of chemicals pretending that a being that can make snakes talk doesn't exist so that hopefully I can enjoy baby burritos without a guilty conscience. 

Nah, I have no regrets whatsoever.  While being honest about my beliefs has come with more than a few consequences, that is more to do with the fact that there's still plenty of religious bigotry to go around.  

To begin my little autobiography, I was raised in Batesville, AR.  By the time I was 8, my grandma was raising me full-time because my mom had become severely schizophrenic.  I have seven siblings, all who have been raised by foster families.  Hopefully one day, I'll get to know them.  

Being an atheist, yes, my old friends from my Church of Christ days definitely think my life is meaningless without an afterlife to look forward to.  Plus, given the mental health problems of mine that they've known about (and what I've struggled with sense), they probably won't change their minds anytime soon.  Still, like any person, I have my set of things that I enjoy.

First and foremost, I am a country music fan, and have been since I was three.  My favorite artists include Gary Allan, David Kersh, Clay Walker, Jessica Andrews, Tammy Rogers, and Mindy McCready.  It is the main focus of my YouTube channel, and I thrive on sharing unreleased songs and hard to find music videos with other people who share my love for these artists and their work.  

I am also a gamer.  The Super Mario franchise and anything MLB-related gets most of my love, but I am also into the Donkey Kong Country series, along with a little bit of Kirby and Pac-Man.  In addition, I have a huge soft spot for boss fights, minigames, and Game Boy Advance games based on licensed cartoons and movies, plus you will find soundtracks from my favorite games on my playlists.  

I also have a huge passion for slasher films, and they have been a part of my life since toddlerhood.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 was my first love, but my favorites these days include Tenebrae, Alice Sweet Alice, The Slumber Party Massacre, Needle, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and Blood Song.  Like with the video games, you will find soundtracks from these films on my playlists.  Goblin's score for Tenebrae is something I've listened to on repeat time and time again.

 

I abstained from these films somewhat during the years I spent being religious, which I will go into more detail about in another post.  I returned to these films not long after coming out of the closet, and my love and appreciation for slashers grew to a new level thanks to 'The Hysteria Continues,' which is a podcast I came across during this time period.  If there was any empty void I had in me after leaving religion, this podcast immediately filled it, and its forums that I'm part of are the first group I was able to fit in with since I was socially withdrawn from after coming out of the closet.  

Podcasts have pretty much replaced TV for me.  In addition to 'The Hysteria Continues,' I also enjoy 'The Thinking Atheist' and 'Dogma Debate,' plus ESPN and CBS's fantasy baseball shows.  Despite how horrible my voice is, doing even just one podcast is a bucket list item for me.

My last love I will mention is my love for cats, but I think it's best saved for another post.  I'm sure many of you reading this have heard a religious person talk about cats and other animals in a denigrating way because they're "just animals."  So what?  Unlike gods (and for the most part, those who are supposedly made his image), you can take pictures like these with a cat. 

Now it's time to talk about my religious background.  I can't exactly say I was ever indoctrinated with religion, but I would say I was indoctrinated with ideas that come from religion, mainly gender roles and homophobia.  Growing up, I would spend attend some church services at Baptist congregations on my own accord for recreational purposes, and attended church camps during a couple of summers.  From 2001 to 2003, I would spend many of my Sundays at the KVMN radio station in Cave City, AR because my grandpa was a DJ there, but I was mostly playing outside or on my Game Boy Advance.  Like with church services, the sermons the visiting preachers taught would typically just go in one ear and out the other.  As I neared adulthood, I entered a time period where I was pissed off at God for how terrible my life had been up to that point.  When you grow up being bullied in school by more privileged people, not having a stable family life, so on and so forth, it gets to you, and being bombarded with platitudes like "God works in mysterious ways" doesn't help much.  By the time I reached adulthood, I had stopped having any part in church attendance... for a little while anyway.

In January 2011, my mom out of the blue gave birth to my sixth sibling and an ambulance had to be called.  A guy who had moved next door not long beforehand checked up on us the following evening.  As it turned out, he was the new preacher at Quail Valley Church of Christ, which was a couple of blocks from us.  After getting to know my family, he started bonding with me.  I was getting into Paul Brandt's music at the time, and our love for it was the common denominator that kicked things off for us.  We eventually started going on neighborhood walks together and eventually, I agreed to go ahead and do Bible studies with him.

Based on my previous impressions of religion, the Church of Christ came off as refreshing and having some sort of grounding in reality.  They didn't believe that every good thing that happened was God working a magic miracle or that God was randomly speaking secretly to people.  More on that in another post.  I also didn't have to put up with the stupid mysterious ways platitudes.

Many times, we nonreligious folks are the ones who are having to touch on the fact that it's okay to say "I don't know," but it was during my Church of Christ days where I learned this.

"Why do bad things happen if God is so loving?"

"I don't know."

"Why would God put the tree of the forbidden fruit in the middle of the garden of Eden?"

"I don't know."

In retrospect, I now realize those questions demand more of an answer, but it was still a revelation that it's okay to say you don't know if you don't know.

After about nine months, there was a night where I got scared to death about what it would be like to burn in Hell forever, so I got in touch with one of my friends and we did some quick studying to go over steps to salvation and I was asked stuff like "Should you question God?" and "If there is a point in time where you have to abandon a relationship with someone you love for God, would you do it?"

Fun fact: I was baptized at 2 in the morning.  Unlike many groups, the Church of Christ doesn't schedule baptisms for the entire congregation to see, and that was when I happened to be awake.  Baptism is seen as a requirement for salvation (1 Peter 3:21, Acts 22:16, Romans 6: 3-7, Mark 16:16), which in that paradigm can't wait because "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thessalonians 5:12).  

Fear continued to be part of this new life of mine for maybe the first three months or so, which was seen as okay because as many of you have probably read in Proverbs, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom." There were still some issues I couldn't stop struggling with, like God putting the tree in the garden of Eden, and I was at least able to discuss them openly and comfortably.  I was what is known as a babe in Christ, so I figured that with more time, prayer, and study, I'd grow into not being so concerned.

Teaching other people was considered mandatory if one wanted to not lose their salvation, and I admit to initially going very overboard.  I became obsessed with converting atheists because I didn't think they were familiar with the "evidences" one of the members was teaching about on Wednesday nights.  I was under the impression they were atheists because of the reasons I had gotten mad at God.  I was naive and thought I could convert them on YouTube comment threads, but I eventually became more of a charitable listener, and spent hours watching The Atheist Experience to see how these arguments were addressed.  My initial thoughts on atheists were proven dead wrong.  

I'm going to wrap things up here, but my next post will involve what it was like to be behind a pulpit, my deconversion, and the aftereffects of coming out of the closet.  Stay tuned!