Sexual Abuse and the Reduction in the Belief in God (page 3)

Lady Lee

even atheists can beleive in a higher power even if it is there inner spirit or the almight doallar

Well, I'm an atheist and I consider myself spiritual, in that I think there is some sort of energy or spirit that connects us all. I don't necessarily think of that spirit as God, though, or even as conscious in any way. I also don't think of it as higher. I don't think of energy as negative or positive either, personalizing the energy in any way. It just "is". We all just "are". We are all exchanging molecules and feeding off the same energy sources though as long as we share this planet and that is where the awareness of interconnectedness comes in for me. We fool ourselves if we think that all of our words and actions don't have a ripple affect to other beings and the eco-system. The affect can be either constructive or destructive, (or sometimes both). It's not always in our control, but where it is we have a choice to make. It's easier to make that constructive choice if we are not in denial about our interconnectedness or stuck in an incredibly selfish ego-centric state.

I don't think I came to any of this lack of belief in God due to my sexual abuse. I was also never angry at God. I just truly accepted the core belief that I was bad and unlovable and undeserving of any better. When I did get fully in touch with my anger it was pretty much solely directed right at the people who perpetrated the abuse, not at God (whom I still believed in at the time) Well, if anything, I've always definitely believed in people taking responsibility for their actions, not deflecting blame elsewhere. (With the sole exception of myself, whom I blamed for everything). My parents taught me well.

The one thing that did lead to my disbelief in God, was my sexual abuse counseling, although we never talked about God and I have no idea whether my counselor believed in God or not. However it was indirectly responsible because it taught me to question those core beliefs about myself and my parents that I had been taught since childhood. They were wrong. What was done to me was a crime. They did not have my best interests at heart. They had their own. Including my mother who covered it up. Once I was able to allow myself to ask those questions and come to my own answers that I KNEW were true, despite anyone else's bullshit stories, well, could questioning the bible and God be far behind? If they had been wrong about me, then maybe they were wrong about all the other stuff they taught me too.

It opened up a dam and a flood of questions and challenging everyone of my core beliefs. I had to learn to start from scratch, re-parenting and re-teaching myself everything and that naturally flowed into confronting and questioning my religious beliefs, a process that took years and produced some of the same anxiety attacks that confronting my parents about the abuse had. For a while there, I felt like a four year old, asking why, why, why, every 5 minutes. That settled down when I realized most of us were going to die without all the answers and that was OK too.

I still don't think my lack of belief has anything to do with abuse though. Or anger. I de-constructed my entire belief system and my entire life and then put it back together again based upon what seemed rational and right to me (after researching lots of perspectives). It may have been abuse and anger that caused that deconstruction process to begin, but it is not what drew me to my conclusions of atheism when I was reconstructing. I trusted myself and my innate intelligence over that of other people for the first time in my life. So far it's working out pretty good for me.

Heaven

CD... well said! One of my biggest issues with what I was taught as a child about God is that 'He' is our 'Father'. Whatever happened to our 'Mother'? I didn't buy for a second that it was the WTS, either, btw. If God created us in his image, how the heck could a male deity possibly create us females? I was very skeptical about alot of this stuff.

When you start looking at history, it is obvious that Christianity had an agenda. If you didn't accept their monotheistic MALE God you were dealt with. The terms 'heretic' and 'witch' were used and some very ugly things occurred if you were deemed one. Just as an aside here, a synonym for heretic is apostate. And God sent his MALE child. The Bible is definitely male dominated. There is a thread of disdain for women that runs throughout the entire Bible. After all, it was the woman who ate first of the forbidden fruit (yeah, whatever).

And to tell me as a teenager that I had to live in subjection to my husband sent waves of warning signals throughout my entire being. Subjugation of anyone is abuse. So the Bible itself condones behaviour that is destructive. This is contradictory to the message of love from Jesus and smacks of lower order thinking.

Disharmony resonates for me with much of what is in the Bible and the Christian faith. Only Jesus' teachings hold any truth for me. So, now, I start with what we/I know. Everything is energy. It can neither be created nor destroyed. Even our thoughts are energy. Everything begins here and flows forth. So I work on this. And as I said before, life goes on regardless of whether God is present or not.

cognizant dissident

I agree Heaven, the Bible is very misogynist, especially the old testament. However, I think that thread of disdain for women runs through every single culture on this earth, to greater and lesser extents, and the religious books produced by those cultures reflect this fact.

I would think God wouldn't have any disdain for his own creation, and any book inspired by him would reflect a transcendence of this destructive dominance of the male of the species. I'm sceptical of any book claiming to be from God that carries these same themes of disdain for women, in even the subtlest form.

My current belief is that we are all primarily animals and human behaviour is not too far removed from the rest of the animal kingdom, alpha males and females constantly fighting for dominance and often ripping each other to shreds to achieve it, both metaphorically and literally. We have evolved a thin veneer of social civilization and equality and hopefully that evolution will continue before we destroy ourselves and the planet. I find it interesting that the countries with the greatest equality between the sexes also have the lowest religiosity and highest rates of atheism.

Religion and belief in God is not quite the civilizing force that its founders hope or claim it to be.

Well that's my two cents worth.

Lady Lee

I'm with both of you on this.

I could never figure out something

Eve was tricked. Her act wasn't deliberate. Adam on the other hand had been told directly and made a deliberate choice to take the fruit.

So why was Eve's punishment greater?

I hate misogyny

cognizant dissident

Apparently, LL, being tricked is a greater sin then direct disobedience. Which is why I for one, will take great pains never to be tricked by a snake...no matter how much of a smooth talker he is.

Lady Lee

OH cog dis I am so glad I swallowed my mouthful of juice before I read that

I seem to have met far too many of those snakes in my lifetime. I don't listen anymore either.

I'm still out on a limb when it comes to God. Holding a baby in my arms - just seems to perfect to be an accident of nature. On the other hand I can't figure out why it takes so long to get anything done

hmmmmm I take that back I was married twice. I should know that answer by now

Lady Lee

Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea. I don't hate men. I kinda like them. But I think I would rather live with a cat

cognizant dissident

I don't hate men either. I like them a little too much. That's part of my problem. I need to pay a little more attention to what they do and a little less attention to what they say.

cognizant dissident

I also agree with you about how a beautiful baby can almost convince you there is a God (and teenagers assure me there is a Devil!). It's that same feeling when I see a beautiful work of art or music. It is hard to believe there is not something greater. I'm not dogmatic in my non-belief. Just awaiting further evidence and refusing to fill in answers with a God of the gaps.

Maybe the beautiful/horrific existence that is the duality of man is as close to God, or the Devil as there is. Maybe Jesus had it right after all, when he said "The kingdom of God is within you". Maybe it's only within us, totally our own creation, a somewhat feeble attempt to explain this duality of beauty and horror that is life.

Sexual Abuse and the Reduction in the Belief in God

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