About Paul Jacobsen
After much personal deliberation, I've decided to use a pen name, "Paul Jacobsen". I wish I didn't have to, I don't like looking like I'm too afraid to tell you who I am. I don't mind telling people who I am, and if you ask I'll probably tell you. But I feel that with some of the information I have to tell here, I shouldn't just indiscriminately broadcast who I am. I hope you can understand after reading this.
Back a few years ago, I was taking an English class at the University of Houston. The subject was "spiritual autobiographies" and we read such works as Confessions by St. Augustine and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. At the time I was taking the class, I professed to be a Christian, though I admit my faith, if I had any at all, was weak. As a class project, I wrote my own spiritual autobiography. In total, it was quite lengthy and I don't want to post the entirety of it here. But there are a few key excerpts that I have chosen to post here.
Excerpt 1 (Short section from around 1980, when I was in High School)
In high school I had a friend who was a "Bible-thumper.” I would generally say that I wanted to find something that I could believe in, and envied those that seem to be fairly certain of their religious beliefs. So I was envious of this “Bible-thumper” friend of mine. But I was always doubtful that I ever would have that certainty. I went to his church once and listened to the preacher. But while I was willing to say "maybe what he preaches is true,” I didn’t know how to ever feel certain.
I think that my primary problem with Christianity is that it didn’t seem to me that God was doing His fair share. I tried many times to say "God, if you’re there, then show me.” Christians said that if you tried sincerely to ask Him to come into your life, He would. Well, He didn’t seem to. It seemed that there were two possibilities. Either Christians were wrong, or I wasn’t sincere enough. Not being sincere enough seemed to me a significant possibility. I might very well be too depraved to be sufficiently sincere. Jesus is quoted in the Bible as saying something to the effect that the wicked would always ask for a sign, but they would receive none. But this seemed to be a “Catch-22" situation. How could I ever be truly sincere if He won’t show Himself, but He won’t show Himself until I am sincere?
Christianity seemed like a game, where God made the rules to where you can’t win and if you lose you go to hell. Not only that, but Satan is allowed to break the rules. He is allowed to do anything, even appear saintly if need be, but if you are deceived, then it is your fault. Ding. Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.00.
Excerpt 2 (1983/College years)
For the moment, things are pretty good in Paul’s life. I’m getting along with my father better. I’m enjoying being an adult. I’m making pretty good money for 1983 at $10.00/hour. I’m able to afford a decent, if not lavish, standard of living. Though I was happy with being an adult, there seemed to be two significant issues preventing me from hitting nirvana. One is I still didn’t know what I believed as far as religion. I think this was always burning on the back burner of my mind, though it had little outward appearance. The other was I was still without the love of a woman. I think this was on more of a front burner. But even with these two issues, I still had no doubt that clearly, this was the best time of my life so far. Little did I know how soon that was to change...
One day I was at work. I was looking through a tool catalog. I saw an ice-pick in the catalog. It happened to remind me of some murder-mystery I had seen where the murderer used an ice-pick through the ear to kill his victim. For some reason, that concept, murder-by-ice-pick locked in my brain. I was having sudden impulses to do bizarre things such as the murder-by-ice-pick. I was immediately also thrown into deep depression. I no longer trusted myself driving for I had impulses to either kill myself, or kill others, or both. But I had to continue to make a living, so I found myself taking the feeder road and driving slowly rather than take the freeway.
If I would see a pedestrian, I would have the impulse to run him over. Everywhere I looked, I saw death. Tall buildings made me think of jumping or falling off. Airplanes made me think of crashes. Knives made me think of cutting and slashing. I didn’t trust myself with a steak knife, so I’d use a butter knife.
My depression was severe. It wasn’t like I was just having a bad day. It was almost like a physical feeling more than an emotional feeling. What I mean by this is that ordinary emotional feelings are ephemeral. If you are upset, but you do something, anything, at least for a moment, you forget what you were upset about. But I couldn’t do anything and not have this feeling of darkness, this feeling that would never leave.
I did not have any loss of ability to discern reality from fiction. I didn’t think I was getting voices from Mars. I knew these feelings were illogical and undesired. I fully understood that these thoughts and feelings were somehow being generated by my own mind. But in a way, it was as if they came from outside of me because they were completely outside of my control. It was like I was having a war with some outside force that kept dropping weird impulses and obsessions into my head. Only that force that I was at war with was somehow within me.
I certainly knew I needed help. I went to doctors and shrinks. It turns out that the first shrinks I went to were quacks. One of them gave me some Thorazine, which is an anti-psychotic. I was NOT psychotic. I knew reality from fiction. The next one gave me some Desiryl. I have recently read that when Desiryl first came out, it was touted as being a better antidepressant than the tricyclic line of antidepressants. But it was apparently just good marketing by Desiryl’s pharmaceutical manufacturer as it has proven to not be; it is now rarely prescribed. But my shrink was convinced at the time that Desiryl was just the thing for depression coupled with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She had me on as much as 1000 mg of the stuff. I was taking twenty 50 mg tablets a day of Desiryl which was of no value to me whatsoever.
I had semi-flunked out of college as I had the habit of signing up for classes, not showing up, and not dropping them. That is the primary reason why I am still taking college courses twenty years later. I refer to this particular year of 1983 as another year-of-hell. I was going to shrinks and taking drugs and getting counseling for a grand total of zero help. So I also had to look elsewhere. I did try some "alternative” medicine. I dabbled in diet and made a short try at vegetarianism. (Though vegetarianism was to play a much bigger role later in life.) None of this seemed to help.
Doctors and shrinks couldn’t seem to help, could it be that only God can help me? I started to go to church for the first time in my life. I tried reading the Bible. I tried asking Him to cure me of this affliction. He didn’t seem to answer. Nothing on earth could help me. Nothing in heaven would help me. There seemed to be a few possibilities:
1. There is no God in heaven to help.
2. I am still stuck in my “Catch-22,” never having enough faith to obtain God’s help, but never being able to get enough faith without God giving some help.
3. My whole problem is a punishment from God for never being able to break my “Catch-22.”
Basically, I was trying anything and everything that could possibly be of help with my problem, standard psychiatry, religion, alternative therapies, etc., to seemingly no avail. Finally, at long last, my shrink that had me on 1000 mg of Desiryl, concluded that it wasn’t working for me. She decided to give me some Pamelor. As with Desiryl, I was told that it may take a few weeks for the drug to start to work. I had no particular reason to believe it would work any better though. I had been given Thorazine, Desiryl and a couple of others that I didn’t mention specifically. Note that a common problem with depressed people is difficulty sleeping. I also had this problem. The previous drugs in general did help with the sleeping simply because they knocked me out, but I would wake up feeling just as bad. Probably the only reason I kept taking the drugs even though they didn’t help with my real problems is they at least helped me to sleep through them. Similarly, Pamelor also knocked me out. After my second dosage, I took a nap. No surprise, I’ve seen this before. But this time it was different. I woke up from this nap in a new world. The cloud was gone. The impulses were gone. It was the closest thing to a miracle that I’ve ever seen. My year-of-hell was over.
Note however that antidepressants are not a cure. They are a treatment. You need to continue to take them. Though the treatment was the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever seen, being dependant on a drug did not sit well with my "independence at all cost” motto. Not only was I dependant on the drug, but I was also dependant on my "pusher,” my shrink. I had direct experience that they might not always give you stuff that is useful. Though I of course knew that they wouldn’t purposely try to do me harm. But I felt as if I needed to continuously prove that I was sufficiently mentally incapacitated to need drugs. Not only was I not independent, I had to prove it too. I had to prove that I was dependant to someone (whom I was also dependant on) to give me drugs, which I was also dependant on. This was a triple level of dependence. This triply sucked.
I tried weaning off the drug. The first time, I weaned off either too early or too quickly, and the symptoms returned. I quickly returned to using the drug. Some time later, I again attempted to wean myself off the drug, this time more slowly. I was successful this time. Depression generally recurs, and I have had to take antidepressants on and off again over the years. But at least for that moment, I had my sanity, and my independence once again. This was about a year after the end of my year-in-hell.
Though I no longer needed medication (for the time anyway...) this episode had massive spiritual implications. Firstly, God either could not or would not help me. I consider this period my second time of giving a “best shot” at being Christian, and came up empty. Yeah, a Christian might say something like "praise God for He led you to find the treatment you needed.” Well, if so, He took His toot-sweet time. That was clearly not how I saw it. It seemed very clear to me that it was a medical problem and medicine fixed it. God had nothing to do with it.
Secondly, I had first hand experience in how much of a person’s thinking is simply a matter of chemical reactions. People like to believe that thought occurs somewhere outside of the physical realm. Somewhere, there is a spirit, a “soul”, in another realm, that does our thinking. Which is probably why people are much more likely to be accepting of ordinary physical ailments than they are of mental ailments. A physical problem means a problem in the body that people happen to need to take them around. But a mental problem means a problem with YOU, your soul. But if thought is really just another physical thing, a product of chemical reactions, there seems to be no room left for a spirit.
I still considered myself in “catch-22.” I wasn’t prepared to say I was an atheist. But the ball, so to speak, was clearly in God’s court. I’ve done all I could, at least at this point in my life in attempts to be a Christian. If He’s there and wants me to be Christian, He has to come to me. I’ve had it.
Excerpt 3 (The year 1988)
In 1988, a friend gave me a book entitled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988. "The Rapture” is something that my father spoke of when I was a child, though I don’t think he used that word. The Rapture is an event many Christians believe will happen where Christians will be plucked from the face of the earth just before the beginning of the Tribulation, the end-times. The author of the book made an argument strong enough that quite a lot of people who already believed in The Rapture believed the author that it would happen in 1988, during the Jewish Rash Hashanah festival.
I had some belief (or fear) that "The Rapture" might actually happen. I was convinced the author made a strong argument that maybe it was really going to happen when the author said it would. This was like a deadline to becoming Christian, and I will use the term "Deadline” to refer to this predicted date of The Rapture.
I was given this book approximately six months before the Deadline. So, I lived for six months or so with this Deadline ahead of me. I’m actually glad this happened to me. I was "highly motivated” to read numerous Christian works. I read a couple by Josh McDowell. He is a Christian apologist using logic. I read McDowell’s Reason’s Skeptics Should Consider the Christian Faith, and parts of Evidence that Demands a Verdict (I & II). While the former is an easy read, the latter are more detailed and a harder read.
I also read two of M. Scott Peck’s works, The Road Less Traveled, and People of the Lie. Through these studies, I sort of mostly kind of convinced myself that probably Christianity is true.
I remember talking to one of my friends who was Christian who was a chemical engineer. I told him of my “catch-22.” He said that we were intellectuals and don’t get "glory bolts.” "Glory bolts” are for the emotionalists. The intellectual’s path is simply to learn enough to convince himself of the validity of Christ, and that was it. So I wondered, "okay, maybe I'm convinced, so that's it?"
I was attending a Methodist church regularly. But I opted to not to officially join the church, at least until after the Deadline - for at least three reasons. The first reason was that at least some Christian teachers teach that those who proclaim themselves a member of the body of Christ are held to a higher standard than those who don’t. Therefore, it would be possible that among two very similar people, one claiming to be Christian and the other not, might find the one NOT claiming to be Christian going to heaven, while the one that does claim to be Christian would go to hell. For example, the one claiming to be Christian might not have attempted to spread the gospel. This would be expected of someone claiming to be a Christian, but would not be expected of a non-Christian. Other Christian teachers might dispute this theology. But on the chance it was true, I didn’t want to be among the class of people held to the higher standard if Deadline was but a few months away.
The second reason for not joining the church prior to the Deadline was that a few end-times prognosticators preached that at the time of the rapture, backslidden Christians would be raptured directly to hell. I think that most rapture theologians would disagree with this, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I didn’t want to take any chances about being classified a backslidden Christian at the Deadline. I’d rather be not raptured at all, then become Christian and then be one of the Christians walking the streets with signs “The End Is Near” after the rapture. I didn’t exactly like that choice, but it would have been at least been better than being handed a "Go directly to hell” card.
The final reason for not joining the church until after the Deadline was because I didn’t want to be joining just because of the Deadline. It seemed fake to join the church only because Deadline was ahead. Fake to myself. Fake to anyone who knew of me and the book. Fake to God. If I was going to join, I had to do so when there was no Deadline anymore.
So the Deadline day came. There is some scripture that says that you shouldn’t let this day come when you’re sleeping. Though of course I knew this was figurative and not literal, I decided to take it literally anyway. I was going to stay up all night that night. Sometime around 3:00 A.M., I was getting very sleepy. The room seemed to spin and I was dizzy. I said “God, if this is it, take me, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” Within a minute or two, I concluded I was just sleepy and God wasn’t here yet. But I concluded I was as close to being a Christian as I was going to get that particular night. If God comes, He can come wake me up. I went to bed.
I woke up the next morning, Deadline was over, and God never came. I was certainly curious as to what the author of the book had to say. He had a hotline phone number. I called it. It had a recording that said something like the author was in prayer and meditation and would provide a statement when he was able. I did sometime see that he did publish a sequel to the book. It had the year “1988" in bold letters, “1989" in slightly dimmer, smaller letters, “1990" in dimmer, smaller letters, etc. I was rushed for time when I saw it and didn’t even get to look inside. I intended to go back later and take a closer look at it. But I had concluded just from the cover that his new theory was that 1988 was a warning bell, and The Rapture could come at any time thereafter. Just a guess, but I’d wager a few bucks on it.
So, with Deadline over, I had to decide was I really a member of Christ’s body and want to join the church, or was I only in it for the Deadline? “Pascal’s Wager” says that you might as well believe in God because if you are wrong and there is no God, when you die it won’t matter whether you were right or wrong, you’re dead. But if there is no God, or some form of afterlife, then nothing matters whether you are alive or dead. Atheists somehow say they live to better themselves or to better mankind or something like that. But what is "better?” If there isn’t any supreme decision maker that says what is better and what isn’t, then better is merely a definition you come up in order to justify doing whatever it is that you are doing that you say makes you better.
I remember reading an article by some physicist. He discussed the two primary theories of the eventual fate of the universe generally considered among physicists of the time, the forever-expanding universe theory, and the rubber-band universe theory. (The latter being the theory that the universe would eventually stop expanding, recompress, eventually big-bang again, and start all over.) This particular physicist dismissed the rubber-band theory and was convinced of the forever-expanding universe theory. He claimed the rubber-band theory was simply wishful thinking that life would always be possible. He computed out the approximate date that molecules would be as far apart as galaxies are today. If someday my molecules will be as far apart as galaxies, what will it matter what I defined “better” to be?
Of course some Christians use the big-bang theory as their proof of God. Even my father, who I noted only on a rare occasion would mention God or religion, did at least one time express this opinion about the big-bang. If all the matter in the universe was at one time all in an infinitely small space, how did it get there, and how could it possibly have big-banged? I’m sure physicists have tried to theorize on this, but I have no clue. Some may say that if you conclude an omnipotent Being put it there and made the big-bang, then where did this Being come from? You are just substituting one impossible to answer puzzle for another. Maybe. But one option gives life meaning, the other option takes away all meaning to everything.
So, based on this logic, and the logic presented by the authors I’ve been reading such as M. Scott Peck and Josh McDowell, my conversations with my friend about “glory bolts,” I decided to join the body of Christ and joined my Methodist church and took baptism - though I still hoped for maybe some tiny “glory bolts.” For if I never would get any “glory bolts,” there would always be some “catch-22" left in my spiritual life.
I continued to attend the church fairly regularly for a few years. Though I never got any “glory bolts,” I generally considered my pastors good people and worth listening to. But I could never really kill the “catch-22.” I didn’t really know for sure if, like my chemical engineer friend said, that this was it for “us intellectuals.” Or if I never really had enough faith to really earn God’s approval.
So, where am I now? What is my motivation?
That concludes my excerpts from my autobiography. So, when I get asked, "have you ever tried praying?" or "have you ever tried to ask Jesus to come in to your life?" all I can answer is, I did the best I could. Though I couldn’t honestly say I ever had a strong faith (or did I ever have any at all?) but I can say I gave it the best shot I was able to.
But in the years since 1988, what ever faith I may have had seemed to erode away. I read Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith in some dim hope it might have some better answers to the age-old questions of faith. Instead, it solidified for me that the Christian answers are just not plausible.
So, what's my motivation for this site? Well, some ask me, "are you angry at God?" My best answer is, I seem to be angry with Him for (probably) not existing. I wish He did, but as best as I can determine, he does not. So, I'm now an atheist, and this site is pretty much just to explain why.
If you have any further questions, leave a message in my guestbook. You can also send me e-mail. See contact page.
Back a few years ago, I was taking an English class at the University of Houston. The subject was "spiritual autobiographies" and we read such works as Confessions by St. Augustine and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. At the time I was taking the class, I professed to be a Christian, though I admit my faith, if I had any at all, was weak. As a class project, I wrote my own spiritual autobiography. In total, it was quite lengthy and I don't want to post the entirety of it here. But there are a few key excerpts that I have chosen to post here.
Excerpt 1 (Short section from around 1980, when I was in High School)
In high school I had a friend who was a "Bible-thumper.” I would generally say that I wanted to find something that I could believe in, and envied those that seem to be fairly certain of their religious beliefs. So I was envious of this “Bible-thumper” friend of mine. But I was always doubtful that I ever would have that certainty. I went to his church once and listened to the preacher. But while I was willing to say "maybe what he preaches is true,” I didn’t know how to ever feel certain.
I think that my primary problem with Christianity is that it didn’t seem to me that God was doing His fair share. I tried many times to say "God, if you’re there, then show me.” Christians said that if you tried sincerely to ask Him to come into your life, He would. Well, He didn’t seem to. It seemed that there were two possibilities. Either Christians were wrong, or I wasn’t sincere enough. Not being sincere enough seemed to me a significant possibility. I might very well be too depraved to be sufficiently sincere. Jesus is quoted in the Bible as saying something to the effect that the wicked would always ask for a sign, but they would receive none. But this seemed to be a “Catch-22" situation. How could I ever be truly sincere if He won’t show Himself, but He won’t show Himself until I am sincere?
Christianity seemed like a game, where God made the rules to where you can’t win and if you lose you go to hell. Not only that, but Satan is allowed to break the rules. He is allowed to do anything, even appear saintly if need be, but if you are deceived, then it is your fault. Ding. Go to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.00.
Excerpt 2 (1983/College years)
For the moment, things are pretty good in Paul’s life. I’m getting along with my father better. I’m enjoying being an adult. I’m making pretty good money for 1983 at $10.00/hour. I’m able to afford a decent, if not lavish, standard of living. Though I was happy with being an adult, there seemed to be two significant issues preventing me from hitting nirvana. One is I still didn’t know what I believed as far as religion. I think this was always burning on the back burner of my mind, though it had little outward appearance. The other was I was still without the love of a woman. I think this was on more of a front burner. But even with these two issues, I still had no doubt that clearly, this was the best time of my life so far. Little did I know how soon that was to change...
One day I was at work. I was looking through a tool catalog. I saw an ice-pick in the catalog. It happened to remind me of some murder-mystery I had seen where the murderer used an ice-pick through the ear to kill his victim. For some reason, that concept, murder-by-ice-pick locked in my brain. I was having sudden impulses to do bizarre things such as the murder-by-ice-pick. I was immediately also thrown into deep depression. I no longer trusted myself driving for I had impulses to either kill myself, or kill others, or both. But I had to continue to make a living, so I found myself taking the feeder road and driving slowly rather than take the freeway.
If I would see a pedestrian, I would have the impulse to run him over. Everywhere I looked, I saw death. Tall buildings made me think of jumping or falling off. Airplanes made me think of crashes. Knives made me think of cutting and slashing. I didn’t trust myself with a steak knife, so I’d use a butter knife.
My depression was severe. It wasn’t like I was just having a bad day. It was almost like a physical feeling more than an emotional feeling. What I mean by this is that ordinary emotional feelings are ephemeral. If you are upset, but you do something, anything, at least for a moment, you forget what you were upset about. But I couldn’t do anything and not have this feeling of darkness, this feeling that would never leave.
I did not have any loss of ability to discern reality from fiction. I didn’t think I was getting voices from Mars. I knew these feelings were illogical and undesired. I fully understood that these thoughts and feelings were somehow being generated by my own mind. But in a way, it was as if they came from outside of me because they were completely outside of my control. It was like I was having a war with some outside force that kept dropping weird impulses and obsessions into my head. Only that force that I was at war with was somehow within me.
I certainly knew I needed help. I went to doctors and shrinks. It turns out that the first shrinks I went to were quacks. One of them gave me some Thorazine, which is an anti-psychotic. I was NOT psychotic. I knew reality from fiction. The next one gave me some Desiryl. I have recently read that when Desiryl first came out, it was touted as being a better antidepressant than the tricyclic line of antidepressants. But it was apparently just good marketing by Desiryl’s pharmaceutical manufacturer as it has proven to not be; it is now rarely prescribed. But my shrink was convinced at the time that Desiryl was just the thing for depression coupled with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). She had me on as much as 1000 mg of the stuff. I was taking twenty 50 mg tablets a day of Desiryl which was of no value to me whatsoever.
I had semi-flunked out of college as I had the habit of signing up for classes, not showing up, and not dropping them. That is the primary reason why I am still taking college courses twenty years later. I refer to this particular year of 1983 as another year-of-hell. I was going to shrinks and taking drugs and getting counseling for a grand total of zero help. So I also had to look elsewhere. I did try some "alternative” medicine. I dabbled in diet and made a short try at vegetarianism. (Though vegetarianism was to play a much bigger role later in life.) None of this seemed to help.
Doctors and shrinks couldn’t seem to help, could it be that only God can help me? I started to go to church for the first time in my life. I tried reading the Bible. I tried asking Him to cure me of this affliction. He didn’t seem to answer. Nothing on earth could help me. Nothing in heaven would help me. There seemed to be a few possibilities:
1. There is no God in heaven to help.
2. I am still stuck in my “Catch-22,” never having enough faith to obtain God’s help, but never being able to get enough faith without God giving some help.
3. My whole problem is a punishment from God for never being able to break my “Catch-22.”
Basically, I was trying anything and everything that could possibly be of help with my problem, standard psychiatry, religion, alternative therapies, etc., to seemingly no avail. Finally, at long last, my shrink that had me on 1000 mg of Desiryl, concluded that it wasn’t working for me. She decided to give me some Pamelor. As with Desiryl, I was told that it may take a few weeks for the drug to start to work. I had no particular reason to believe it would work any better though. I had been given Thorazine, Desiryl and a couple of others that I didn’t mention specifically. Note that a common problem with depressed people is difficulty sleeping. I also had this problem. The previous drugs in general did help with the sleeping simply because they knocked me out, but I would wake up feeling just as bad. Probably the only reason I kept taking the drugs even though they didn’t help with my real problems is they at least helped me to sleep through them. Similarly, Pamelor also knocked me out. After my second dosage, I took a nap. No surprise, I’ve seen this before. But this time it was different. I woke up from this nap in a new world. The cloud was gone. The impulses were gone. It was the closest thing to a miracle that I’ve ever seen. My year-of-hell was over.
Note however that antidepressants are not a cure. They are a treatment. You need to continue to take them. Though the treatment was the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever seen, being dependant on a drug did not sit well with my "independence at all cost” motto. Not only was I dependant on the drug, but I was also dependant on my "pusher,” my shrink. I had direct experience that they might not always give you stuff that is useful. Though I of course knew that they wouldn’t purposely try to do me harm. But I felt as if I needed to continuously prove that I was sufficiently mentally incapacitated to need drugs. Not only was I not independent, I had to prove it too. I had to prove that I was dependant to someone (whom I was also dependant on) to give me drugs, which I was also dependant on. This was a triple level of dependence. This triply sucked.
I tried weaning off the drug. The first time, I weaned off either too early or too quickly, and the symptoms returned. I quickly returned to using the drug. Some time later, I again attempted to wean myself off the drug, this time more slowly. I was successful this time. Depression generally recurs, and I have had to take antidepressants on and off again over the years. But at least for that moment, I had my sanity, and my independence once again. This was about a year after the end of my year-in-hell.
Though I no longer needed medication (for the time anyway...) this episode had massive spiritual implications. Firstly, God either could not or would not help me. I consider this period my second time of giving a “best shot” at being Christian, and came up empty. Yeah, a Christian might say something like "praise God for He led you to find the treatment you needed.” Well, if so, He took His toot-sweet time. That was clearly not how I saw it. It seemed very clear to me that it was a medical problem and medicine fixed it. God had nothing to do with it.
Secondly, I had first hand experience in how much of a person’s thinking is simply a matter of chemical reactions. People like to believe that thought occurs somewhere outside of the physical realm. Somewhere, there is a spirit, a “soul”, in another realm, that does our thinking. Which is probably why people are much more likely to be accepting of ordinary physical ailments than they are of mental ailments. A physical problem means a problem in the body that people happen to need to take them around. But a mental problem means a problem with YOU, your soul. But if thought is really just another physical thing, a product of chemical reactions, there seems to be no room left for a spirit.
I still considered myself in “catch-22.” I wasn’t prepared to say I was an atheist. But the ball, so to speak, was clearly in God’s court. I’ve done all I could, at least at this point in my life in attempts to be a Christian. If He’s there and wants me to be Christian, He has to come to me. I’ve had it.
Excerpt 3 (The year 1988)
In 1988, a friend gave me a book entitled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will be in 1988. "The Rapture” is something that my father spoke of when I was a child, though I don’t think he used that word. The Rapture is an event many Christians believe will happen where Christians will be plucked from the face of the earth just before the beginning of the Tribulation, the end-times. The author of the book made an argument strong enough that quite a lot of people who already believed in The Rapture believed the author that it would happen in 1988, during the Jewish Rash Hashanah festival.
I had some belief (or fear) that "The Rapture" might actually happen. I was convinced the author made a strong argument that maybe it was really going to happen when the author said it would. This was like a deadline to becoming Christian, and I will use the term "Deadline” to refer to this predicted date of The Rapture.
I was given this book approximately six months before the Deadline. So, I lived for six months or so with this Deadline ahead of me. I’m actually glad this happened to me. I was "highly motivated” to read numerous Christian works. I read a couple by Josh McDowell. He is a Christian apologist using logic. I read McDowell’s Reason’s Skeptics Should Consider the Christian Faith, and parts of Evidence that Demands a Verdict (I & II). While the former is an easy read, the latter are more detailed and a harder read.
I also read two of M. Scott Peck’s works, The Road Less Traveled, and People of the Lie. Through these studies, I sort of mostly kind of convinced myself that probably Christianity is true.
I remember talking to one of my friends who was Christian who was a chemical engineer. I told him of my “catch-22.” He said that we were intellectuals and don’t get "glory bolts.” "Glory bolts” are for the emotionalists. The intellectual’s path is simply to learn enough to convince himself of the validity of Christ, and that was it. So I wondered, "okay, maybe I'm convinced, so that's it?"
I was attending a Methodist church regularly. But I opted to not to officially join the church, at least until after the Deadline - for at least three reasons. The first reason was that at least some Christian teachers teach that those who proclaim themselves a member of the body of Christ are held to a higher standard than those who don’t. Therefore, it would be possible that among two very similar people, one claiming to be Christian and the other not, might find the one NOT claiming to be Christian going to heaven, while the one that does claim to be Christian would go to hell. For example, the one claiming to be Christian might not have attempted to spread the gospel. This would be expected of someone claiming to be a Christian, but would not be expected of a non-Christian. Other Christian teachers might dispute this theology. But on the chance it was true, I didn’t want to be among the class of people held to the higher standard if Deadline was but a few months away.
The second reason for not joining the church prior to the Deadline was that a few end-times prognosticators preached that at the time of the rapture, backslidden Christians would be raptured directly to hell. I think that most rapture theologians would disagree with this, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I didn’t want to take any chances about being classified a backslidden Christian at the Deadline. I’d rather be not raptured at all, then become Christian and then be one of the Christians walking the streets with signs “The End Is Near” after the rapture. I didn’t exactly like that choice, but it would have been at least been better than being handed a "Go directly to hell” card.
The final reason for not joining the church until after the Deadline was because I didn’t want to be joining just because of the Deadline. It seemed fake to join the church only because Deadline was ahead. Fake to myself. Fake to anyone who knew of me and the book. Fake to God. If I was going to join, I had to do so when there was no Deadline anymore.
So the Deadline day came. There is some scripture that says that you shouldn’t let this day come when you’re sleeping. Though of course I knew this was figurative and not literal, I decided to take it literally anyway. I was going to stay up all night that night. Sometime around 3:00 A.M., I was getting very sleepy. The room seemed to spin and I was dizzy. I said “God, if this is it, take me, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” Within a minute or two, I concluded I was just sleepy and God wasn’t here yet. But I concluded I was as close to being a Christian as I was going to get that particular night. If God comes, He can come wake me up. I went to bed.
I woke up the next morning, Deadline was over, and God never came. I was certainly curious as to what the author of the book had to say. He had a hotline phone number. I called it. It had a recording that said something like the author was in prayer and meditation and would provide a statement when he was able. I did sometime see that he did publish a sequel to the book. It had the year “1988" in bold letters, “1989" in slightly dimmer, smaller letters, “1990" in dimmer, smaller letters, etc. I was rushed for time when I saw it and didn’t even get to look inside. I intended to go back later and take a closer look at it. But I had concluded just from the cover that his new theory was that 1988 was a warning bell, and The Rapture could come at any time thereafter. Just a guess, but I’d wager a few bucks on it.
So, with Deadline over, I had to decide was I really a member of Christ’s body and want to join the church, or was I only in it for the Deadline? “Pascal’s Wager” says that you might as well believe in God because if you are wrong and there is no God, when you die it won’t matter whether you were right or wrong, you’re dead. But if there is no God, or some form of afterlife, then nothing matters whether you are alive or dead. Atheists somehow say they live to better themselves or to better mankind or something like that. But what is "better?” If there isn’t any supreme decision maker that says what is better and what isn’t, then better is merely a definition you come up in order to justify doing whatever it is that you are doing that you say makes you better.
I remember reading an article by some physicist. He discussed the two primary theories of the eventual fate of the universe generally considered among physicists of the time, the forever-expanding universe theory, and the rubber-band universe theory. (The latter being the theory that the universe would eventually stop expanding, recompress, eventually big-bang again, and start all over.) This particular physicist dismissed the rubber-band theory and was convinced of the forever-expanding universe theory. He claimed the rubber-band theory was simply wishful thinking that life would always be possible. He computed out the approximate date that molecules would be as far apart as galaxies are today. If someday my molecules will be as far apart as galaxies, what will it matter what I defined “better” to be?
Of course some Christians use the big-bang theory as their proof of God. Even my father, who I noted only on a rare occasion would mention God or religion, did at least one time express this opinion about the big-bang. If all the matter in the universe was at one time all in an infinitely small space, how did it get there, and how could it possibly have big-banged? I’m sure physicists have tried to theorize on this, but I have no clue. Some may say that if you conclude an omnipotent Being put it there and made the big-bang, then where did this Being come from? You are just substituting one impossible to answer puzzle for another. Maybe. But one option gives life meaning, the other option takes away all meaning to everything.
So, based on this logic, and the logic presented by the authors I’ve been reading such as M. Scott Peck and Josh McDowell, my conversations with my friend about “glory bolts,” I decided to join the body of Christ and joined my Methodist church and took baptism - though I still hoped for maybe some tiny “glory bolts.” For if I never would get any “glory bolts,” there would always be some “catch-22" left in my spiritual life.
I continued to attend the church fairly regularly for a few years. Though I never got any “glory bolts,” I generally considered my pastors good people and worth listening to. But I could never really kill the “catch-22.” I didn’t really know for sure if, like my chemical engineer friend said, that this was it for “us intellectuals.” Or if I never really had enough faith to really earn God’s approval.
So, where am I now? What is my motivation?
That concludes my excerpts from my autobiography. So, when I get asked, "have you ever tried praying?" or "have you ever tried to ask Jesus to come in to your life?" all I can answer is, I did the best I could. Though I couldn’t honestly say I ever had a strong faith (or did I ever have any at all?) but I can say I gave it the best shot I was able to.
But in the years since 1988, what ever faith I may have had seemed to erode away. I read Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith in some dim hope it might have some better answers to the age-old questions of faith. Instead, it solidified for me that the Christian answers are just not plausible.
So, what's my motivation for this site? Well, some ask me, "are you angry at God?" My best answer is, I seem to be angry with Him for (probably) not existing. I wish He did, but as best as I can determine, he does not. So, I'm now an atheist, and this site is pretty much just to explain why.
If you have any further questions, leave a message in my guestbook. You can also send me e-mail. See contact page.