I was reading replies to a random tweet one day when I ran across a comment from "Lilith" (@LilithLiberated). She claimed to be an atheist but stated that she "hates god." I had a tough time understanding how that could be possible. Often times while using social media, a religious believer will accuse me of having a hatred for god. I always respond that I don't hate god at all. It would be impossible for me to hate something that doesn't even exist. I often will clarify that I do hate certain actions (or lack of actions) performed by religious people. So I had to reply to Lilith's comment and ask her to clarify how she could hate something that doesn't exist. After a few questions, I asked if she would be ok with me posting all our Q&A on the blog. Here is our conversation:
@GodsNotReal_ : You say you're a "misotheistic anti-theist" which means you hate religion and hate god. Tell me a little bit about how you can hate something that doesn't exist.
Lilith : Regarding my self-identifying as a misotheisic anti-theist, let me first say that anyone who knows me is aware that I am a very all or nothing type of person. I’ve often been criticized for the degree of emotion I put into things but it is my nature and when I truly feel that something is unjust I can’t just let it go. Anti-theist Is the more common term so I will address it first. Religion is false. Revelations are lies or delusions and belief is maintained through frauds manipulation and intimidation. When backed into a corner believers will say it gives them comfort yet millions of innocent people die for that comfort. The person also lies to themselves, they are trained to. And to avoid critical thinking that would undermine that belief. Therefore I maintain that religion is harmful both individually and collectively. It causes us to violate our most basic moral and intellectual integrity And the injustice and cruelty that results from these lies can hardly be measured. I am against religion because it is a honeyed poison. Atrox Melior Dulcissima Veritas Mendaciis. Better the bitterest truth than the sweetest lie.
As for the term misotheist, which I dug up deliberately shortly after my deconversion, it refers to several things. When I am confronted by more simple minded believers parroting bad process presuppositionalist apologetics that they barely understand, I answer the simplest way possible.
Of course, god is a lie and I hate lies.
This has the merits both of being true, and of cutting off at the knees the predictable assertion that I cannot hate what doesn’t exist.
That hatred is a response to many part of my life in faith. The first is my own personal sense of violation. We all have core values I value truth and justice over anything and everything. It is absurdly and almost amusingly difficult for me to lie. But I also have an internal need to protect those who are taken advantage of and a drive to wreak vengeance on their oppressors. Though obviously that last point has to be tempered somewhat.
I read the Bible as a child. I already had all the stories memorized but the book itself was another matter. To read through the horrible things that happened and to know that you absolutely had to find one side to be right even if it was the most disgusting imaginable. People who have never experienced this cannot imagine what it feels like to be trapped in your own mind feeling forced to justify an atrocity. It was rather like someone took me as a child and made me invent a justification for Auschwitz. I am not the only atheist who has experienced this. I recall Seth Andrews speaking to a crowd and asking “how many have you had that experience of looking down at the Bible and suddenly seeing the rivers of innocent blood?” I truly felt complicit for having invented justifications for such things even if many of them never happened the principle is the same. In that sense the god concept, since god cannot be said to actually exist in any other form, has done me irreparable harm. It is not the only way it has harmed me, had I not been raised a creationist I would probably be a scientist right now. Had I not been raised to believe that god had a plan on which I ought to rely I might’ve made very different choices in my life, or made choices at all at certain junctures. And as you noticed, had I not been taught to rely on god, that he could and would help me, would hear my prayers and could answer them, it would’ve made many painful times in my life far easier. And I would’ve been given the dignity of coming to terms with death far sooner. In all cases it was because I believed, because I truly believed, that I was the more harmed. Both for this and for the injustices visited upon millions of others real and imagined I cannot overstate how much I abhor god.
@GodsNotReal_ : Your blog describes a story in which growing up you constantly dealt with failed prayers as people close to you died. What did that feel like? Is that the only reason you became an atheist or was there more to it?
Lilith : The story I wrote in my blog about death was a way to lance the pain. Every incident it describes occurred and can certainly be seen as markers in my changing concept of god through my life. When you realize you have relied upon a lie you often find yourself having to go back through your life to look at it from a new perspective. My indoctrination ran very deep and thus through all these experiences I felt compelled to justify my oppressor in a sense. There are many painful things that become far more horrible when there is intent behind them. We are far more angry if we are attacked than if we merely have an accident. To believe god good, to believe that he could help me and constantly be left hanging I don’t think I can describe the constant sense of betrayal, fear, guilt, confusion, And the desperate desire to defend the indefensible. The best analogy is to observe someone who has endured long and terrible parental or spousal abuse. It is exactly the same desperate coping mechanisms that they employ that are taught as faith to the faithful.
Fuck faith.
But I digress, despite the intensity of my emotion I can say with certainty that that is not why I stopped believing. I stopped believing because of the evidence against my belief. Against the Bible, against the unity and continuity of the god concept. Having experienced so much pain and death may have made me more willing to accept evidence that I had previously been trained to avoid. It put a crack in my loyalty and thus indirectly, helped me find a way out. The emotional climax I describe, the death of my nephew, which was the only time I refused to pray because I couldn’t bear being failed again, was indeed a climactic moment emotionally. It was the beginning of the end, but the facts had to be addressed first.
@GodsNotReal_ : What evidence or argument against god did you previously ignore that you were willing to ponder after dealing with so much tragedy?
Lilith : With regard to what evidence, it honestly was a very slow process and it wasn’t all about tragedy. In the end I think that the comedy of George Carlin the debunking of things on Penn and Tellers' bullshit and Hugo and Jake's Bible reloaded laughing at chick tracts did as much to wedge my mind open just a little bit as anything else. In fact I trace much of my spiritual questioning from the time I was accosted on the street by a woman who handed me a chick tract. The irony was that I was coming from applying for a library job reading the biography of an opera singer and she handed me a tract called party girl. I laughed my ass off. Poking fun at the extremities of religion I had escaped from helped me, healed me in a way.
The evidence that finally broke my faith, oddly, I first saw on the video series why I am no longer a Christian by… evid3nce on YouTube.
It was the explanation of the origin of the Jewish concept of God. I knew there had been some Persian influences after the exiled to Babylon. But what I didn’t know was the patch together beginning. The combination of the war God Yahweh imported from Moab in the south and the Canaanite father god El, analogous to Zeus in the Greek Pantheon.
It took a while for me to get to the place to even hear that evidence but once I did, I knew the Bible so well that my mind filled with confirming information. There’s a tale told three times in the Old Testament about the king of Israel and Judah going to war and speaking to the prophets. The king of Israel collects say 50 prophets of God and they all prophesied that everything will go well. And then the king of Judah says but is there a prophets of the LORD here. It never made any sense hadn’t they just spoken to 50 prophets of the Lord? In the king of Israel then says yes but I don’t like him and brings the prophet of the Lord in. And one story it’s Mica in the other it’s Elisha, the Kings are the same in both stories and at least one of them dies in battle so it’s a clear contradiction.
anyways the prophet of the Lord pronounces doom and one of the prophets of God produces a set of ceremonial bulls horns and says with these horns I will strike down your enemies.
Suddenly it all made sense. With the four author theory I knew that El was written as God and Yahweh as the LORD even though they were supposed to refer to the same God most of the time. The symbols of the bull all throughout the history of Northern Israel. This example jumped to mind because it was a case where the two versions of god were clearly clashing and I’d always found it so confusing. I assumed the others were false prophets but they weren’t, they were just prophets of the other half of God. I have an extraordinary memory for certain types of storytelling and when I heard this and actually considered it for the first time I already knew enough about the Bible to know that it made sense of so many confusing points. It’s one of the only things I’ve just accepted on the face of it because I already knew so much the evidence.
You know now that I think about it there was one key moment I missed. Having the courage to look at the evidence against my position, really look at it without just assuming out of hand that it was false , came from two moments that I accidentally observed by atheists. I had been watching videos on YouTube I wouldn’t listen to the arguments of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens because frankly I was trained not to. I just wanted to hear normal people I guess and what they thought. There was a clip of Christopher Hitchens speaking about something and there was silence after one. And he said “and I knew I wasn’t going to get any applause for that…“ Applause began and he said “no no don’t applaud, I’m sorry if you thought I wanted you to applaud you mistook me. My own opinion is enough for me.“
Having always felt the need to submit my opinion to dogma, at that moment I would’ve given my soul to of had his confidence. My only regret is that I will never have a chance to thank him. I did send a thank you note though I doubt it was ever received because the Internet being what it is, to Richard Dawkins for the second moment. He was in a debate with someone and they had thrown about the usual red herring about charity work or something, And he had absolutely had it. He flipped out demanding “what does any of this have to do with what is true? I care about what is true.”
That was all I had ever valued, all I ever wanted to be in one statement .
There was also the underlying implicit question. If my side has the truth why is he the one demanding it?
The intellectual integrity shown by both men gave me a clear example of what that was and gave me the courage to wrest my own integrity back from the shackles it was placed in when I was five years old. Of all I have thought of all I have lost of all I have suffered I have never regretted that and I would not trade it for anything.
@GodsNotReal_ : When you became an atheist, what were the first couple of weeks like? Did you tell others and if so, what was their reaction?
Lilith : The answer to this feeds into the answer to your fourth question. Once I saw where the idea of the Jewish god came from. That it was a clear Chimera, a patchwork, a Frankenstein‘s monster of a deity it broke any vestige of hope that there was anything real at the back of it. This was literally just one more made up god, it wasn’t any high and exalted concept just another sticky idea that snowballed into something bigger.
When I realized this I was sick to my stomach for three days. I felt like the foundations of my world had collapsed under me I didn’t know which way was up I didn’t know what to think I think I vaguely remember staring out the window beside my bed unable to think because I had no reference frame.
From the outside it have been obvious that I had been moving in this direction for sometime, I have even gone to an atheist meet up just to see what it was like, but I never truly believed it was 100% false till that moment.
Regrettably at that time I was married to an abusive and slightly crazy man. He asked if I was an atheist previously I had said no finally when it was true I said yes and he called me a demon and started acting more insane. Ultimately I had a talk with the pastors of my church. I had a job singing there and as a result was sent away even though it was the only work I could do at the time being so sick. It was actually harder to tell my parents because they had gone through the same pain and the only time the argument for comfort has any validity is when you’re right in the middle of a tragedy and just don’t mess with any functioning structure because of course not. I had to tell them, I have never known how to be dishonest. I didn’t try and change their minds but when they tried to change mine I became very direct about why I lost my faith and they quickly stopped trying. Once I clearly articulated all reasons why Christianity was blood magic and human sacrifice that was the last time they brought up any attempt to change my mind. The change of perspective was so abrupt I couldn’t have hid it if I wanted to. The very thought of pretending to belong to such an atrocious lie made me physically sick, I shared my discoveries with one friend and it gave her the same closure from faith it gave me. She is now far healthier with a wonderful husband a newborn child and free from the guilt that religion had crippled her with for years. I’m proud of that. Nor do I regret the things I lost, as much as it hurt, I have never wanted anything that was not true.
@GodsNotReal_ : Have you dealt with tragedy since being an atheist? And if so, how is it different?
Lilith : Well as far as tragedy is concerned I faced multiple tragedies I was sort of in the middle of a run of them when I became an atheist. Theists will say oh see you were just mad at God. That wasn’t it but it I was perhaps more willing to consider that I was wrong. That’s really all it takes. I faced struggles since then but I’ve been much better off. Not relying on a false hope that’s never going to come through for you means that you have to accept reality as it is and look at what you can actually do in a situation. It seems a little more hopeless sometimes knowing that there’s no magical easy button that will get you out of it. But it’s actually easier to deal with the situation you understand then to constantly be relying on a false hope. False hope is also tremendously exhausting and when I’m dealing with a crisis I need my energy to be focused on something useful. Once I am responsible for my own actions. Once there’s no magical faith that this is all leading to some good end. I’ve been more able to be honest about bad situations and get out of them, to accept difficulties that I can’t control as being things I can’t control. It’s not as rose tinted but it’s a hell of a lot easier to navigate.
@GodsNotReal_ : Do you generally get along with religious people? How does your hatred of religion affect personal relationships?
Lilith : My hatred of religion has had some strain on my personal relationships. I lost all my friends at the church. I’ve had some people who wanted to discuss it but as soon as they realized the breath of my objections most of them just tapped out. With my family things have been more sensitive. We suffered some tragedies. So aside from my initial outburst I try not to criticize religion in their presence. It’s sometimes frustrating though when I start excitedly sharing about some new scientific discovery and my dad gets defensive and start saying wow that’s great that God did it that way isn’t God great. It’s frustrating to see intelligent people become defensive about something that should be wonderful. The truth is most of the people I’ve known in my life have been religious. And most of them have been very good people. My opinion on that hasn’t changed. But I am starting to notice a lot more of the intellectual dishonesty that supports that position and I find it frustrating. That being said I still love my family very much and we have all been there for each other as much as we can over the difficulties of the last few years my parents didn’t become bad parents because I became an atheist and I’m very grateful for that
@GodsNotReal_ : Did your political views also change when you became an atheist? If so, how?
Lilith : As for my political views. They didn’t change in the immediate aftermath of my becoming an atheist but they certainly changed over the time when I was questioning my faith so for a good 10 years there I moved from feeling obligated to hold conservative values to embracing more liberal and humanistic values. When I was still a Christian I wrote an entry on my blog about how my opinion changed about gay marriage. At that time I still felt the need to have A belief justified by the Bible. I have been taught that was wrong to be gay. As I learned more about it the predicted harm never materialized and the people against were assholes so, possibly for the only time in my life, I deliberately and intentionally went OK let’s see if there’s anyway we can justify this within the context of Christianity. I knew it wasn’t intellectually honest I was just so sick of feeling obligated to be on the side of the assholes.
There was a book, The Cross in the Closet, I think, but I actually ordered it. It was a guy who deliberately pretended to be gay so that he could experience what gay people went through and understand that even though he was initially a conservative Christian.
Anyway that was a good example of how my morality emerged slowly, dragging my dogma behind it like Marley‘s chains. I can say first-hand Hitchens did not exaggerate. Our worst elements come from religion, our best in spite of it
@GodsNotReal_ : Do you consider yourself a "firebrand atheist" (think David Silverman), or are you more passive, like Seth Andrews?
Lilith : With regard to being an atheist I absolutely think I’m a firebrand. I have toned it down a lot around family members because you have to be gentler with people who are close to you you know the chinks in their armour and your opinion means more to that. Outside of that I vehemently hate the lies I was told and I hate everything I felt urged to justify and I will speak out about it wherever I can.
I take Penn Jillette‘s quote as a moto. Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.
@GodsNotReal_ : If you were invited to speak at your former church about your experience as an atheist, and you could hammer home one idea or thought to the congregation, what would it be?
Lilith : I spoke to two pastors when I lost my faith and they both impressed me with a degree of intellectual dishonesty that really bothered me. The first was Paul he was more intelligent and mature of the two but when I said I was questioning even the existence of Jesus he said that that made him angry because it’s a scholarly consensus was that Jesus existed. That bothered me now because at that time I thought Jesus didn’t exist but because no question should make you angry because someone is looking at the evidence for it. He also, when I raised questions with the biblical texts said “we only need to believe that they were in errand in their original form and we don’t have that“. It was so painfully dishonest. I have to believe X. X is demonstrably false. If I tweaked X so it cannot be verified I can still believe it. Therefore I believe X1.
Phil was far worse. He started in with the lead up to the Lewis trilemma asking me who I thought Jesus was and when I said a myth he didn’t really have anywhere to go from there. Everything I pointed out and scriptures he would just think excuses like but they would’ve talked to so-and-so of course they would’ve done such and such. It’s like if the thing was even conceivably possible to justify this then obviously they did it. No matter how many contradictions I pointed out it was just a excuse after excuse. There wasn’t even the recognition that these excuses might require some evidence. It was as though, if you could think up an excuse, that was good enough.
I only brought this to mind because you asked what I would tell my old church. There were a lot of good people there a lot of kind people. I would tell them what I told Phil. I would say that they were good and generous people that their kindness and goodness came from them. But god kept demanding things of them and never giving back in anything except feelings which they could acquire from themselves and each other. I would say that if god existed he did not deserve them. I would say that it is wrong to feel you have to believe something. I would tell them that the reason I didn’t believe had nothing to do with the reasons that everyone tells you an atheist doesn’t believe. But they may have been told that atheism is a religion or that we were just mad at god or wanted to sin and it was all bullshit. That’s not why I think anything and I’ve never met anyone who does. I would tell them to ask and actually listen to what we had to say. I would tell them I hated their god because I love them and because the system of that god took advantage of them, and then degraded them for being “sinful“ when many of them are the kindest people I’ve ever met. I would say god does not get the credit for their kindness they do. And I know they want me to credit the goodness to god and there are evil to their own fallen nature but it’s exactly the opposite they do not deserve to be mistreated in this way. Many of god‘s most sincere followers are too good for him. He doesn’t deserve them.
@GodsNotReal_ : Tell me about Lilith, the first feminist. What do you want people to know about her and feminism in general?
Lilith : The tale of Lilith was told as a cautionary tale. She was labeled a demon who preyed on children and seduced innocent men. But when you go back farther and read the story you realise her crimes. The refusal to be demeaned, the courage to take action, the integrity not to be bullied into returning to "her place".
When we do these things weak, cowardly men are enraged. They want us to be small enough to make them feel great. When we refuse to diminish ourselves the response is predictable. We are declared predatory and perverted. Twisted and evil.
If these attacks are ever leveled at you, stop. Take a moment to consider your actions. If you have taken your own life and integrity in hand, if the only pain you have caused is to refuse to take responsibility for someone else's weakness, then you have done right. The men who respond this way act out of their own weakness and perversion. Do not apologise. Fight back.
You have the right and the responsibility to choose your life. You are so much stronger, more beautiful, and more powerful than they could hope to be. Trust yourself and have courage. Fight smart. Fight for yourself.
She who is brave is free.
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@GodsNotReal_ : You say you're a "misotheistic anti-theist" which means you hate religion and hate god. Tell me a little bit about how you can hate something that doesn't exist.
Lilith : Regarding my self-identifying as a misotheisic anti-theist, let me first say that anyone who knows me is aware that I am a very all or nothing type of person. I’ve often been criticized for the degree of emotion I put into things but it is my nature and when I truly feel that something is unjust I can’t just let it go. Anti-theist Is the more common term so I will address it first. Religion is false. Revelations are lies or delusions and belief is maintained through frauds manipulation and intimidation. When backed into a corner believers will say it gives them comfort yet millions of innocent people die for that comfort. The person also lies to themselves, they are trained to. And to avoid critical thinking that would undermine that belief. Therefore I maintain that religion is harmful both individually and collectively. It causes us to violate our most basic moral and intellectual integrity And the injustice and cruelty that results from these lies can hardly be measured. I am against religion because it is a honeyed poison. Atrox Melior Dulcissima Veritas Mendaciis. Better the bitterest truth than the sweetest lie.
As for the term misotheist, which I dug up deliberately shortly after my deconversion, it refers to several things. When I am confronted by more simple minded believers parroting bad process presuppositionalist apologetics that they barely understand, I answer the simplest way possible.
Of course, god is a lie and I hate lies.
This has the merits both of being true, and of cutting off at the knees the predictable assertion that I cannot hate what doesn’t exist.
That hatred is a response to many part of my life in faith. The first is my own personal sense of violation. We all have core values I value truth and justice over anything and everything. It is absurdly and almost amusingly difficult for me to lie. But I also have an internal need to protect those who are taken advantage of and a drive to wreak vengeance on their oppressors. Though obviously that last point has to be tempered somewhat.
I read the Bible as a child. I already had all the stories memorized but the book itself was another matter. To read through the horrible things that happened and to know that you absolutely had to find one side to be right even if it was the most disgusting imaginable. People who have never experienced this cannot imagine what it feels like to be trapped in your own mind feeling forced to justify an atrocity. It was rather like someone took me as a child and made me invent a justification for Auschwitz. I am not the only atheist who has experienced this. I recall Seth Andrews speaking to a crowd and asking “how many have you had that experience of looking down at the Bible and suddenly seeing the rivers of innocent blood?” I truly felt complicit for having invented justifications for such things even if many of them never happened the principle is the same. In that sense the god concept, since god cannot be said to actually exist in any other form, has done me irreparable harm. It is not the only way it has harmed me, had I not been raised a creationist I would probably be a scientist right now. Had I not been raised to believe that god had a plan on which I ought to rely I might’ve made very different choices in my life, or made choices at all at certain junctures. And as you noticed, had I not been taught to rely on god, that he could and would help me, would hear my prayers and could answer them, it would’ve made many painful times in my life far easier. And I would’ve been given the dignity of coming to terms with death far sooner. In all cases it was because I believed, because I truly believed, that I was the more harmed. Both for this and for the injustices visited upon millions of others real and imagined I cannot overstate how much I abhor god.
@GodsNotReal_ : Your blog describes a story in which growing up you constantly dealt with failed prayers as people close to you died. What did that feel like? Is that the only reason you became an atheist or was there more to it?
Lilith : The story I wrote in my blog about death was a way to lance the pain. Every incident it describes occurred and can certainly be seen as markers in my changing concept of god through my life. When you realize you have relied upon a lie you often find yourself having to go back through your life to look at it from a new perspective. My indoctrination ran very deep and thus through all these experiences I felt compelled to justify my oppressor in a sense. There are many painful things that become far more horrible when there is intent behind them. We are far more angry if we are attacked than if we merely have an accident. To believe god good, to believe that he could help me and constantly be left hanging I don’t think I can describe the constant sense of betrayal, fear, guilt, confusion, And the desperate desire to defend the indefensible. The best analogy is to observe someone who has endured long and terrible parental or spousal abuse. It is exactly the same desperate coping mechanisms that they employ that are taught as faith to the faithful.
Fuck faith.
But I digress, despite the intensity of my emotion I can say with certainty that that is not why I stopped believing. I stopped believing because of the evidence against my belief. Against the Bible, against the unity and continuity of the god concept. Having experienced so much pain and death may have made me more willing to accept evidence that I had previously been trained to avoid. It put a crack in my loyalty and thus indirectly, helped me find a way out. The emotional climax I describe, the death of my nephew, which was the only time I refused to pray because I couldn’t bear being failed again, was indeed a climactic moment emotionally. It was the beginning of the end, but the facts had to be addressed first.
@GodsNotReal_ : What evidence or argument against god did you previously ignore that you were willing to ponder after dealing with so much tragedy?
Lilith : With regard to what evidence, it honestly was a very slow process and it wasn’t all about tragedy. In the end I think that the comedy of George Carlin the debunking of things on Penn and Tellers' bullshit and Hugo and Jake's Bible reloaded laughing at chick tracts did as much to wedge my mind open just a little bit as anything else. In fact I trace much of my spiritual questioning from the time I was accosted on the street by a woman who handed me a chick tract. The irony was that I was coming from applying for a library job reading the biography of an opera singer and she handed me a tract called party girl. I laughed my ass off. Poking fun at the extremities of religion I had escaped from helped me, healed me in a way.
The evidence that finally broke my faith, oddly, I first saw on the video series why I am no longer a Christian by… evid3nce on YouTube.
It was the explanation of the origin of the Jewish concept of God. I knew there had been some Persian influences after the exiled to Babylon. But what I didn’t know was the patch together beginning. The combination of the war God Yahweh imported from Moab in the south and the Canaanite father god El, analogous to Zeus in the Greek Pantheon.
It took a while for me to get to the place to even hear that evidence but once I did, I knew the Bible so well that my mind filled with confirming information. There’s a tale told three times in the Old Testament about the king of Israel and Judah going to war and speaking to the prophets. The king of Israel collects say 50 prophets of God and they all prophesied that everything will go well. And then the king of Judah says but is there a prophets of the LORD here. It never made any sense hadn’t they just spoken to 50 prophets of the Lord? In the king of Israel then says yes but I don’t like him and brings the prophet of the Lord in. And one story it’s Mica in the other it’s Elisha, the Kings are the same in both stories and at least one of them dies in battle so it’s a clear contradiction.
anyways the prophet of the Lord pronounces doom and one of the prophets of God produces a set of ceremonial bulls horns and says with these horns I will strike down your enemies.
Suddenly it all made sense. With the four author theory I knew that El was written as God and Yahweh as the LORD even though they were supposed to refer to the same God most of the time. The symbols of the bull all throughout the history of Northern Israel. This example jumped to mind because it was a case where the two versions of god were clearly clashing and I’d always found it so confusing. I assumed the others were false prophets but they weren’t, they were just prophets of the other half of God. I have an extraordinary memory for certain types of storytelling and when I heard this and actually considered it for the first time I already knew enough about the Bible to know that it made sense of so many confusing points. It’s one of the only things I’ve just accepted on the face of it because I already knew so much the evidence.
You know now that I think about it there was one key moment I missed. Having the courage to look at the evidence against my position, really look at it without just assuming out of hand that it was false , came from two moments that I accidentally observed by atheists. I had been watching videos on YouTube I wouldn’t listen to the arguments of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens because frankly I was trained not to. I just wanted to hear normal people I guess and what they thought. There was a clip of Christopher Hitchens speaking about something and there was silence after one. And he said “and I knew I wasn’t going to get any applause for that…“ Applause began and he said “no no don’t applaud, I’m sorry if you thought I wanted you to applaud you mistook me. My own opinion is enough for me.“
Having always felt the need to submit my opinion to dogma, at that moment I would’ve given my soul to of had his confidence. My only regret is that I will never have a chance to thank him. I did send a thank you note though I doubt it was ever received because the Internet being what it is, to Richard Dawkins for the second moment. He was in a debate with someone and they had thrown about the usual red herring about charity work or something, And he had absolutely had it. He flipped out demanding “what does any of this have to do with what is true? I care about what is true.”
That was all I had ever valued, all I ever wanted to be in one statement .
There was also the underlying implicit question. If my side has the truth why is he the one demanding it?
The intellectual integrity shown by both men gave me a clear example of what that was and gave me the courage to wrest my own integrity back from the shackles it was placed in when I was five years old. Of all I have thought of all I have lost of all I have suffered I have never regretted that and I would not trade it for anything.
@GodsNotReal_ : When you became an atheist, what were the first couple of weeks like? Did you tell others and if so, what was their reaction?
Lilith : The answer to this feeds into the answer to your fourth question. Once I saw where the idea of the Jewish god came from. That it was a clear Chimera, a patchwork, a Frankenstein‘s monster of a deity it broke any vestige of hope that there was anything real at the back of it. This was literally just one more made up god, it wasn’t any high and exalted concept just another sticky idea that snowballed into something bigger.
When I realized this I was sick to my stomach for three days. I felt like the foundations of my world had collapsed under me I didn’t know which way was up I didn’t know what to think I think I vaguely remember staring out the window beside my bed unable to think because I had no reference frame.
From the outside it have been obvious that I had been moving in this direction for sometime, I have even gone to an atheist meet up just to see what it was like, but I never truly believed it was 100% false till that moment.
Regrettably at that time I was married to an abusive and slightly crazy man. He asked if I was an atheist previously I had said no finally when it was true I said yes and he called me a demon and started acting more insane. Ultimately I had a talk with the pastors of my church. I had a job singing there and as a result was sent away even though it was the only work I could do at the time being so sick. It was actually harder to tell my parents because they had gone through the same pain and the only time the argument for comfort has any validity is when you’re right in the middle of a tragedy and just don’t mess with any functioning structure because of course not. I had to tell them, I have never known how to be dishonest. I didn’t try and change their minds but when they tried to change mine I became very direct about why I lost my faith and they quickly stopped trying. Once I clearly articulated all reasons why Christianity was blood magic and human sacrifice that was the last time they brought up any attempt to change my mind. The change of perspective was so abrupt I couldn’t have hid it if I wanted to. The very thought of pretending to belong to such an atrocious lie made me physically sick, I shared my discoveries with one friend and it gave her the same closure from faith it gave me. She is now far healthier with a wonderful husband a newborn child and free from the guilt that religion had crippled her with for years. I’m proud of that. Nor do I regret the things I lost, as much as it hurt, I have never wanted anything that was not true.
@GodsNotReal_ : Have you dealt with tragedy since being an atheist? And if so, how is it different?
Lilith : Well as far as tragedy is concerned I faced multiple tragedies I was sort of in the middle of a run of them when I became an atheist. Theists will say oh see you were just mad at God. That wasn’t it but it I was perhaps more willing to consider that I was wrong. That’s really all it takes. I faced struggles since then but I’ve been much better off. Not relying on a false hope that’s never going to come through for you means that you have to accept reality as it is and look at what you can actually do in a situation. It seems a little more hopeless sometimes knowing that there’s no magical easy button that will get you out of it. But it’s actually easier to deal with the situation you understand then to constantly be relying on a false hope. False hope is also tremendously exhausting and when I’m dealing with a crisis I need my energy to be focused on something useful. Once I am responsible for my own actions. Once there’s no magical faith that this is all leading to some good end. I’ve been more able to be honest about bad situations and get out of them, to accept difficulties that I can’t control as being things I can’t control. It’s not as rose tinted but it’s a hell of a lot easier to navigate.
@GodsNotReal_ : Do you generally get along with religious people? How does your hatred of religion affect personal relationships?
Lilith : My hatred of religion has had some strain on my personal relationships. I lost all my friends at the church. I’ve had some people who wanted to discuss it but as soon as they realized the breath of my objections most of them just tapped out. With my family things have been more sensitive. We suffered some tragedies. So aside from my initial outburst I try not to criticize religion in their presence. It’s sometimes frustrating though when I start excitedly sharing about some new scientific discovery and my dad gets defensive and start saying wow that’s great that God did it that way isn’t God great. It’s frustrating to see intelligent people become defensive about something that should be wonderful. The truth is most of the people I’ve known in my life have been religious. And most of them have been very good people. My opinion on that hasn’t changed. But I am starting to notice a lot more of the intellectual dishonesty that supports that position and I find it frustrating. That being said I still love my family very much and we have all been there for each other as much as we can over the difficulties of the last few years my parents didn’t become bad parents because I became an atheist and I’m very grateful for that
@GodsNotReal_ : Did your political views also change when you became an atheist? If so, how?
Lilith : As for my political views. They didn’t change in the immediate aftermath of my becoming an atheist but they certainly changed over the time when I was questioning my faith so for a good 10 years there I moved from feeling obligated to hold conservative values to embracing more liberal and humanistic values. When I was still a Christian I wrote an entry on my blog about how my opinion changed about gay marriage. At that time I still felt the need to have A belief justified by the Bible. I have been taught that was wrong to be gay. As I learned more about it the predicted harm never materialized and the people against were assholes so, possibly for the only time in my life, I deliberately and intentionally went OK let’s see if there’s anyway we can justify this within the context of Christianity. I knew it wasn’t intellectually honest I was just so sick of feeling obligated to be on the side of the assholes.
There was a book, The Cross in the Closet, I think, but I actually ordered it. It was a guy who deliberately pretended to be gay so that he could experience what gay people went through and understand that even though he was initially a conservative Christian.
Anyway that was a good example of how my morality emerged slowly, dragging my dogma behind it like Marley‘s chains. I can say first-hand Hitchens did not exaggerate. Our worst elements come from religion, our best in spite of it
@GodsNotReal_ : Do you consider yourself a "firebrand atheist" (think David Silverman), or are you more passive, like Seth Andrews?
Lilith : With regard to being an atheist I absolutely think I’m a firebrand. I have toned it down a lot around family members because you have to be gentler with people who are close to you you know the chinks in their armour and your opinion means more to that. Outside of that I vehemently hate the lies I was told and I hate everything I felt urged to justify and I will speak out about it wherever I can.
I take Penn Jillette‘s quote as a moto. Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.
@GodsNotReal_ : If you were invited to speak at your former church about your experience as an atheist, and you could hammer home one idea or thought to the congregation, what would it be?
Lilith : I spoke to two pastors when I lost my faith and they both impressed me with a degree of intellectual dishonesty that really bothered me. The first was Paul he was more intelligent and mature of the two but when I said I was questioning even the existence of Jesus he said that that made him angry because it’s a scholarly consensus was that Jesus existed. That bothered me now because at that time I thought Jesus didn’t exist but because no question should make you angry because someone is looking at the evidence for it. He also, when I raised questions with the biblical texts said “we only need to believe that they were in errand in their original form and we don’t have that“. It was so painfully dishonest. I have to believe X. X is demonstrably false. If I tweaked X so it cannot be verified I can still believe it. Therefore I believe X1.
Phil was far worse. He started in with the lead up to the Lewis trilemma asking me who I thought Jesus was and when I said a myth he didn’t really have anywhere to go from there. Everything I pointed out and scriptures he would just think excuses like but they would’ve talked to so-and-so of course they would’ve done such and such. It’s like if the thing was even conceivably possible to justify this then obviously they did it. No matter how many contradictions I pointed out it was just a excuse after excuse. There wasn’t even the recognition that these excuses might require some evidence. It was as though, if you could think up an excuse, that was good enough.
I only brought this to mind because you asked what I would tell my old church. There were a lot of good people there a lot of kind people. I would tell them what I told Phil. I would say that they were good and generous people that their kindness and goodness came from them. But god kept demanding things of them and never giving back in anything except feelings which they could acquire from themselves and each other. I would say that if god existed he did not deserve them. I would say that it is wrong to feel you have to believe something. I would tell them that the reason I didn’t believe had nothing to do with the reasons that everyone tells you an atheist doesn’t believe. But they may have been told that atheism is a religion or that we were just mad at god or wanted to sin and it was all bullshit. That’s not why I think anything and I’ve never met anyone who does. I would tell them to ask and actually listen to what we had to say. I would tell them I hated their god because I love them and because the system of that god took advantage of them, and then degraded them for being “sinful“ when many of them are the kindest people I’ve ever met. I would say god does not get the credit for their kindness they do. And I know they want me to credit the goodness to god and there are evil to their own fallen nature but it’s exactly the opposite they do not deserve to be mistreated in this way. Many of god‘s most sincere followers are too good for him. He doesn’t deserve them.
@GodsNotReal_ : Tell me about Lilith, the first feminist. What do you want people to know about her and feminism in general?
Lilith : The tale of Lilith was told as a cautionary tale. She was labeled a demon who preyed on children and seduced innocent men. But when you go back farther and read the story you realise her crimes. The refusal to be demeaned, the courage to take action, the integrity not to be bullied into returning to "her place".
When we do these things weak, cowardly men are enraged. They want us to be small enough to make them feel great. When we refuse to diminish ourselves the response is predictable. We are declared predatory and perverted. Twisted and evil.
If these attacks are ever leveled at you, stop. Take a moment to consider your actions. If you have taken your own life and integrity in hand, if the only pain you have caused is to refuse to take responsibility for someone else's weakness, then you have done right. The men who respond this way act out of their own weakness and perversion. Do not apologise. Fight back.
You have the right and the responsibility to choose your life. You are so much stronger, more beautiful, and more powerful than they could hope to be. Trust yourself and have courage. Fight smart. Fight for yourself.
She who is brave is free.
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