Deon Barnard

This article has been a long time in coming and is the result of many hours of internal struggle, research, comparison and discussion. Four years ago I physically left the church – about four years before that I was already putting aside faith for reason. During these last four years I have tried not to categorize my religious views with any labels, partly because I needed to assimilate the full depth of understanding what terms like ‘Atheist’ actually meant and partly because I still carried an aversion, implanted by the system, to many of these labels – after all, I had always thought that being an Atheist was synonymous with being allied with Satan (as do most religious folk) – and when you’ve been led to believe your whole life that something is “bad” it’s pretty hard to throw off that conviction. Until now I’ve stuck with the safe categorization of “Agnostic” (someone who doesn’t believe there is enough evidence to prove the existence of God), and I took the safe and simple approach of, “you worry about your life and I’ll worry about mine”, i.e.: Let’s agree to disagree – or – You go ahead and do your religious thing and leave me in peace. I no longer hold this view. I will now actively oppose religion and am relieved to be able to call myself an Atheist, or Anti-Theist. I will discuss why this approach is necessary after I give a better understanding of a few terms and concepts that will help readers digest what I am saying.

Let’s start with defining the terms Theist, Atheist, Agnostic and Faith.

• A Theist is someone who believes in a god or gods, i.e. God exists in reality.
• An Atheist is someone who does not believe that a god or gods exists, i.e. God is not real and does not exist.
• An Agnostic is someone who thinks that God cannot be proven or that we cannot know God, i.e. there is no evidence for God.
• Faith is the act of believing without any requirement for evidence or proof. With evidence or proof there is no need for Faith because we have Knowledge – so Faith can be substituted for Knowledge in the absence of evidence.

It is not uncommon for people to be Agnostic-Theists, i.e. someone who doesn’t really claim to be able to prove God but believes in God anyway for reasons other than evidence and faith. It also makes sense that you could be an Agnostic-Atheist, i.e. someone who does not believe in God because of the lack of evidence. In all my travels and dealings with Christians and other religious people around the world I have noticed two main distinctions; I will call them True-Theists (Believers) and Agnostic-Theists (Religious by convenience). My opinion is that the majority (more than half) of all Christians are Agnostic-Theists rather than True-Theists. These are people who attend church and adhere to all the trappings of their religion because of the personal benefits like: a sense of belonging; acceptance; acceptability; community support, comfort, friendship, financial aid, status, opportunities etc. – all good attributes of the church, but none of which make it true, or right. These people don’t really believe that all Earthly languages originated from the tower of Babel; or that every species of animal lived in walking distance from Noah’s house; or that Daniel really stayed overnight in a pit of wild, untamed and hungry Lions and survived – in fact they don’t really think much about God at all; they simply choose to adopt the mantle of Christian because it’s working for them, and being anything else would damage their reputations, relationships and other aspects of their lives. If you’re one of these people, this article is for you! On the upside you already think rationally and suspect that everything you stand for is based on mythology and superstition – on the downside you think that all the good stuff about church adds enormous value to your life and is irreplaceable – hopefully I can convince you otherwise.

To the other group, the True-Theists, there is little I can do to change your minds, mainly because you’re not using your minds. No amount of evidence or science or history will convince you that your belief is misplaced. You believe through sheer blind faith, (faith is blind by definition), that: there is an invisible being in a place called Heaven; which we can’t see or find until we die; who has declared you sinful from birth; and will throw you into hell if you don’t acknowledge him unquestioningly; and yet who loves you “unconditionally”; and who is somehow influenced by your particular choice of words in prayer; who allows confusion and faithlessness and hunger and disaster on the Earth for reasons you don’t fully understand; and who cares who you have sex with and how; and who judges your sin even in your mind and while you sleep; and “came to earth” on an arbitrary day in history to a dry Roman province via a virgin, so that in dying, somehow getting to heaven would be easier than it was before… hmmm.

I was a believer for many years – passionate about my Faith, as I am passionate about everything I do. I remember ridiculing Jehovah’s Witnesses for being closed minded and not open to rational conversation – armed with their nonsensical “proofs” from their nonsensical “Bible”. I now understand that I was exactly the same! Think about it; if I were to ask the average believer what would convince them that God does not exist, they would say, “Nothing! I’ll never stop believing.” and yet they have the cheek to call Atheists stubborn and closed-minded, when in fact most Atheists could easily give a list of things that would make them convert on the spot if they were to occur. I’ll write another article on this point. I can only hope you come to your senses before you’ve wasted your whole life avoiding the freedom of truth and causing further carnage in the world… which brings me to the crux of this article – why religion should be opposed.

I’m speaking again to those that feel, “Why do Atheists get so hung up about people’s religious choices? Just live and let live. Some well meaning person who attends church every Sunday and gives to the poor isn’t hurting anyone, so let them follow their religion of choice!” This is a view I have shared for some time but I have come to realize that it is naïve and irresponsible to think this way. Religious belief on a micro scale (if it were confined to a handful of people on a deserted Island) may not have any great negative impact on the world other than the personal self deception involved, but we don’t all live on our own island – each individual believer supports a system of control and manipulation which, on a macro scale, becomes an extremely negative force in the World. Let’s look at a few simple examples:

A kind-hearted and conscientious Muslim man goes to Mosque and says his prayers as required. He never hurts anyone and always gives to the poor and supports his local Islamic initiatives, believing that he is pleasing God in doing so. Him and millions of others feed energy and finances into a system which advocates violence and the killing of infidels in its core scriptures; and although they are not personally involved in such matters and prefer to interpret their scriptures more figuratively; their church is involved in a holy war against Christians which results in flying jet planes into civilian buildings in New York killing thousands. Is our man innocent in this? Can he claim that he had nothing to do with it? All this for a myth of a myth that doesn’t exist.

A devout German Christian believes in a loving god in heaven and wants to please him. He has come to understand that to please god you have to please your leaders in Christ. He loves his God and his country and is willing to defend both from any unbeliever that would dare challenge the status quo. The new leader of his country, Adolf Hitler, a man of passion and faith has inspired him to join the army to do just that. He comes to realize that Germany is a holy nation surrounded by unclean nations that must be brought into the fold and tamed. He says goodbye to his wife and kids who he loves dearly to go and do his duty for God and country in the concentration camps where they are making sure that the evil influence of Jews and other unclean races is controlled and quelled. He knows that he will be rewarded for his loyalty in the afterlife if not in this life. He is a “good” man. The kind of “good” man you see in churches everywhere.

Religions on a macro scale (which are the accumulation of millions of individuals believing), have been responsible for:

• Countless wars, including the Muslim/Christian Crusades; the Catholic/Protestant wars of Ireland, the U.K., France, Sweden and Poland; the Taiping rebellion in China; Islamic violence in the name of Jihad; the Muslim/Hindu wars of India; the Buddhist/Tamil war in Sri Lanka; the countless wars between the Jews and everyone else; and the list goes on ad nauseum.
• Religious genocide in Europe (Jews), Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, U.S.S.R and many other places.
• The repression of women everywhere.
• Resisting (often violently) scientific progress, as well as the persecution of great thinkers for thousands of years.
• Witch hunts and inquisitions resulting in the torture and deaths of thousands of innocent people in Europe.
• The dilution of quality education in schools everywhere to make space for meaningless religious activities that promote mysticism and superstition instead of enlightenment and human solidarity.
• Human sacrifice, slavery and mutilation such as female circumcisions in initiation ceremonies.
• The distortion of historical facts and our place in the universe.

… to name a few!

So you still think religions are good for the world? Or maybe you think that your happy clappy Christian church feeds the poor and teaches people how to be good citizens, so you have nothing to do with the above list? Well here’s a news break – if all that carnage above didn’t exist, neither would your church; and if all your churches didn’t exist, neither would the carnage on the list. Christopher Hitchens is right when he says, “Religion poisons everything”. It’s time for humanity to wake up, throw off the ancient myths of our infancy and grow into the evolved, awake and conscious species that we can be. If we direct the energy and resources that we currently use to maintain our meaningless religious structures and use them for science and progress we could be travelling to the stars in our lifetime. Every good thing you’re doing in your churches in the name of “God” can be done without needing to believe in nonsense at the same time. “But what about fellowship and belonging” you ask? Well join a gym; a golf club; a neighborhood board game group… whatever – there are a million ways to make friends with people who share interests in the real world instead of a shared belief in an invisible friend in the sky.

I look forward to your comments and abuse.

Religion is a mystical, manipulative and brain deadening system designed to control the weak and gullible majority for the benefit of a few hypocritical ‘leaders’ who decide all the rules. Yes, I am very passionate about this topic! Organized religion has been responsible for more carnage, hatred, war and bloodshed in the last 6000 years of our history that any other causes or motivation. Sure, it could be argued that some religious wars were really about money, territory or power; but ultimately those are the benefits of religion anyway, so the causes are interchangeable. The ‘macro’ evidence of wars, crusades and inquisitions speak for themselves, but often we overlook the ‘micro’ consequences that occur in the lives of individual adherents of organised religions; billions of hapless individuals who have had, to some degree, their free will replaced with unquestioning submission to a set of rules and regulations stipulated by a holy man or holy book; their time wasted with meaningless activities aimed at keeping the sheep in line; and their money and personal resources milked for a ridiculous cause that nobody is allowed to question.

I, like millions of others in my country was raised on church. ‘Christened’ in an Anglican church, ‘confirmed’ in a Methodist church and ‘baptised’ in the middle of Africa somewhere. I went to ‘Sunday School’ where I learned all the biblical stories and was told “it’s all true”. If I questioned anything I got some lame explanation like, “the bible says so” or, “don’t worry about that now – one day you’ll understand” or, “just pray about and the Holy Spirit will reveal the answer”. I started to believe, like so many others, that the less logical a thing was and the more I just believed what I was told ‘by faith’ and not evidence, the more I pleased God and the greater my ‘chances of getting into heaven’. I was so taken by the whole concept that I joined a mission organisation and spent the next few years travelling the globe preaching and teaching with the goal to get people everywhere ‘saved’. With each new ‘convert’ I felt I was pleasing God more and securing my position in the church and in heaven. I then joined the staff of a church as a pastor and finally even led a church of my own.

A few years into all this my brain started to rebel. On one hand I was a Christian mercenary trying to get everyone to agree with my view; but the thinking, rational, free part of me was saying “whoah – stop – look – think! What the hell are you doing? This is not what people need.” I started to become aware of what was really taking place in churches all over the world – and not just churches but temples and mosques and synagogues and all the other centres for religious brainwashing. Even more frightening was the fact that I was one of the brainwashers. I was using my public speaking ability and motivational skill to perpetuate a system of control and fear. It took a few years to separate myself from the system, so strong was its hold on me, that when I finally broke free entirely I literally wept for all the damage I had done to people’s lives. Now that I am free to think and be who I really am I am growing as a spiritual being and not stagnating as a blind shepherd. I am growing in love, in joy, in peace, in intimacy, in tolerance and in my awareness of the real truths that operate in the world and the universe at large. I don’t need to know that God (or my pastor) loves me, to love myself. I don’t have to attend arbitrary meetings to feel like I am making good use of my time. I don’t have to ‘go to church’ to feel like I am connecting with God. Nobody can use the threat of hell to convince me to obey anything unquestioningly. I don’t use ‘faith’ as a replacement for logical thought. I have no fear of being rejected by any particular community anymore. The world is my oyster – I’m fearless – I’m free.

Here are some things people need to understand about religion:

1. Religion is based on fear and manipulation

How do you take a bunch of potentially intelligent individuals and get them to believe… mmm… that the Bible is a book written by God over thousands of years using the hands and pens of various human beings, and that its all literally 100% true in every detail, despite the fact that there are multitudes of versions, some which include more chapters than others. Or that currently it is God’s will that one man marry one woman and that he ‘changed his mind’ from the days when he was cool with David and Solomon marrying hundreds of woman. Or that God was cool with slavery in 50AD but he agrees with us now that it’s not so cool anymore. Or that God cares about what you wear to church or how many minutes of ‘quiet time’ you spend with him each day. Or that God can speak to some guy leading a church in… Winklesfontein… but not to directly to you. Oh, the list is endless. Millions of illogical, contradictory superstitions are happily entertained by thinking people everywhere. How? Through fear and manipulation.

Think about it. What would happen if you were to tell your leader that you doubt God’s existence? Either he would laugh and roll his eyes, implying that you must be stupid to think that way (i.e. playing on your low self esteem and need to be accepted); or he would frown and accuse you of blasphemy and warn you not to question God (i.e. playing on your fear of hell or getting into ‘trouble’). Either way there’s little chance of having a rational conversation that involves empirical proof. The church, like any other organisation or business requires finances to thrive. How do they get their finances? They scare people into giving or manipulate them into thinking that tithing is a personal get rich quick scheme. People are told that if they don’t give, the money they keep will be cursed anyway… oh hell, then we’d better give like crazy. How do you get a bunch of people to keep giving and submitting? You gather them together every week for a brain alignment and fear casting session – it’s called church. But no one would willingly attend such insanity if they understood what was happening to them, so the religion uses fear and manipulation to coerce attendance. “If you don’t attend church you will displease God (a really dumb thing to do)”. “Why weren’t you at church on Sunday? God can only help you if you stay warm in the fire of fellowship”. “You know, if you stay away from church you’re really out in the wilderness where the ‘Devil’ can have his way with you”… and so on.

In fact, the “Fear of God” is the foundation of most religions. When your brain is bombarded with a tidal wave of contradictory and improbable notions the best thing you can do (if you want to remain acceptable and included in society) is to stop thinking and just bow down in fear and submission… aaaah, now doesn’t that feel better? Everything will be just fine. See you on Sunday. Don’t forget to smile and bring your bible. We really love you… just don’t disagree with us.

2. Religion kills

As I said earlier, on a macro scale this is easy to see. Millions of Christians and Muslims died in the crusades. Millions of innocent people died at the hands of Roman Catholic inquisitors and Christian emperors and kings. Thousands of Irish and English people died in the cross fire between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. Many innocent Arabs we’re killed by an expanding Muslim nation under Mohammed. How many have died in India from Hindu/Islamic violence? The closed and fearful doctrines of religion can only lead to intolerance and conflict on a frightening scale. The killing I refer to in the title however is that of the individual human spirit. Religion has for years slowed down the progress of science and human creativity. When Galileo claimed that the earth was not at the centre of the universe, but instead revolved around the sun, he was incarcerated by the church and held prisoner for the rest of his life (they probably would have burned him alive had he not been as well known). Copernicus came up with the ideas before him but didn’t do much with it for fear of being killed for his ideas. The same was true for many mathematicians and scientists of the dark ages. It seems that only when an idea has enough critical mass acceptance does the church start wondering what to do with it – and then someone works out how to take the “new idea” and incorporate it into the current doctrine in such a way that it seems it was always there to begin with.

I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of people desperately trying to gain acceptance from their religious leaders and looking for a platform to be recognised for their unique gifts and talents, only to be turned away, put on the shelf or remoulded into the image of the church until the gift is dead and useless. I have seen capable, strong, talented individuals reduced to mindless cattle obeying every whim and fancy of the system – no longer capable of open, philosophical conversation or common sense. Religion replaces free will with mindless obedience; honesty and openness with fake smiles and insincere intentions; real love with sacrificial duty; passion with subservience; life with paralysis; truth with dogma and mysticism; facts with fiction; stewardship with religious stealing; inspiration with manipulation; joy with fear. I am embarrassed to have ever been part of it, but I am also thankful that I can relate to those who are in it and hopeful that I can point them to freedom. Religion does not make a man greater, it makes him weak. It does not make a man wiser, it makes him dull. It does not point to the truth; it keeps us from pursuing the truth. Religion kills our spirit, weakens our mind and steals our freedom.

3. Religion makes no sense

There are so many contradictory and changing doctrines in the church it’s really quite difficult to keep up. In fact it’s impossible to keep up, which is why the average Christian can turn their brains off and just accept everything they hear as truth. If we don’t actually process anything it’s fairly easy to go with the “God knows everything, I’ll just trust him…Keep it simple,” theory. Why is it that we take some scriptures literally (tithe 10%, fellowship regularly, homosexuals are going to hell) and others we pass off as being ‘historical’ or ‘contextual’ (cover your heads, men and women must sit separately in church, don’t eat unclean animals). The reality is that the leadership of the church will justify whatever it suits them to justify and the people will accept whatever justification is fed to them. If the logic is challenged then people resort to the old classics, “Don’t question God!” or “God told me to do it” or “If you spend more time in prayer God will reveal this truth to you” or “You’re not spiritual enough”. Yowzers! Well if that’s the case then full sail ahead – no more questions from me – no-sir-ee sir – whatever you say.

There are elements of macro evolutionary theory that I don’t buy because there’s no substantial evidence. There are also core foundations of religion that are nothing more than elaborate children stories based on imagination with no substantial evidence. Telling me that I should believe that God exists because there’s a story in a book about someone who chatted to God… just doesn’t cut it. Telling me that the world was created in 7 days about 6000 years ago is insane. We may as well believe that Smurfs exist in the centre of the earth – there’s about as much evidence. Telling me that the world was populated by Adam’s kids inbreeding with each other and then that it was all wiped out to start again with four couples and a boatload of animals in Turkey… do you think I’m retarded? Are you really going to try and convince me that an intelligent being called GOD sits in a place we can’t see or find called HEAVEN? And this God who has the power to create everything that exists, is worrying about whether or not I have sex before marriage and drink too much and has an eternal war going on with an entirely evil angel called the DEVIL whom God himself created?! And the irony of it all is that Christians think that their religion is somehow more ‘advanced’ or ‘civilized’ than the pagan religions of old or the Greek pantheon of Olympian Gods who slept and argued with each other. It’s all the same: Hindu, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Baptist, Catholic, and Charismatic – it makes no difference. If you’re in a religion then you’re accepting a bunch of arbitrary rules, doctrines and bedtime stories as ultimate truth; you’re blindly following a group of leaders; and you’re living in fear of hell. On one hand you accept that the earth is round and that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, because it can be proven, yet on the other hand you you’re convinced about heaven and hell for which there is no proof, logic or reasonable argument except that someone wrote about it in a book thousands of years ago.

Conclusion

I love people, even religious people. Many of my good friends are religious people and they have no doubt about my positive feelings for them. I hate religion, because it corrupts and weakens and manipulates and controls, but most of all it’s plain rubbish. Yes, there are many religious organisations that do humanitarian work and help feed and clothe and house people – but I believe that the people doing this work would be doing so regardless of their religion because they’re generous and loving people. I believe the world would be a more loving, tolerant, peaceful and happy place if there were no religions at all.

I’ll be posting a lot more on this topic in days to come.