me is no atheist: my earliest religious memory... (religiorant)

my earliest religious memory, as hazy as it is, is that of me being in Sunday school along with a bunch of other kids with the chairs arranged around the outside of the class room facing inward so we could listen to the Catholic Sister standing up in the middle of the class room doing the Sunday school thing,

I remember listening but also looking around the room at all the other kids to see if anyone else was accepting what was being said. I remember having this feeling along the lines of "is anyone else buying this?" it may have also been like that situation when you hear something funny, but before you embarrass yourself and burst out laughing you look around to see if anybody else is laughing, or at the least have a smile on their faces in acknowledgement of the joke.

I seem to recall asking questions of the Sister, and I also seem to recall not going to church very much at all after that ... in fact i've probably been to a church twice in the last twenty years and one was a funeral, the other a marriage, and no more than a few dozen times in my entire life, so about as often as most christians, hey?...

the little I remember of being in church itself was the getting sore knees from kneeling and I remember thinking, how can they make old people kneel down like this? and also i remember not knowing the words or the tune to the songs being sung. religion would be so much more popular if the songs (psalms?) were rock anthems like Queens' "We will rock you" or stuff like "teach your children well" ..

click HQ the sound is great... it'll soften the blow of the video...


You, who are on the road
Must have a code
That you can live by
And so
Become yourself
Because the past
Is just a good-bye
Teach you children well
Your father's hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks
The one you'll know by
Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

And give of tender years
Can't know the fears
That your elders grew by
And so please help
Them with your belief
They seek the turf
Before they can die
Teach your parents well
The childrens hell
Will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks
The one you'll know by
Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

But just from that tiny bit of exposure to biblical teachings, I do remember having a fear of death and dying, but that fear faded, but left was a fear of god.

a totally undefined entity that I somehow, feared. But fear of the unknown is pointless. Pity i didn't know sooner.

In fact it's entirely possible that religion had nothing to do with my perception of god at all, as I didn't have much of a fear of hell, not that I recall, all I feared was god making my life worse and worse...

but one useful thing I did get from catholic church, in retrospect, was that the idea that conferring with the Priest or Sister was a *good* thing when you had questions about the bible et al, none of this bullshit coming up with your own interpretations of things like these fucktards do today.. space is a fucking ocean, the earth is fixed in space, the universe moves around the earth every day, ra ra ra, my arse!!! although moving the universe around the Earth is definitely a *worthy* task for a god, so if there is a god, it spends all of its time concentrating on spinning the universe around us once a day, because only a god could move things *Way*Way*Way* faster than the speed of light!!

ie. just beyond the orbit of Neptune, there is a point where anything further away from us needs to be travelling faster than the speed of light in order for it to move around us in a day...

So if this is true, then I demand every one stop praying, RIGHT FUCKING NOW!! as you might distract god from this task and in the space of a nanosecond distraction, the universe could fly apart, because we all KNOW this god made mistakes. eg. gave us free will, but we decided to be evil, but then gave us commandments millennia later.

can we say, "too late fuckhead?". that god dickhead should have given us the commandments *right* at the start when we supposedly got kicked out of Eden. what a dumbarse this god is, hey?

The amount of christians that have blatantly gotten the bible wrong is disgustingly appalling - where is the head of the christian actually at? It would be too polite to say they obviously have their heads up their own arses, but if that were the case, wherence for thou art cometh the *new* stupid ideas?

I didn't really need any more convincing that religion sucked and sucked arse, as I was a study freak as a kid. I learnt all about the crusades and the inquisitions long before I figured out that it was the very same church to which I was supposedly an adherer that did all the bullshit I'd been pointing the finger down upon ...

the christians killing people in their crusades - tens of thousands of them in Jerusalem, in one battle, over one day.. I had no concept of Jews and Muslims, I mean I knew they were other religions, but I had no idea about how they were linked with christianity...

I was taught that Jesus loved everyone, that the meek would inherit the earth, that you should do unto others as they have done to you... no, that's what I meant ... someone treats me nice - i treat them nice in return - someone treats me bad - they'll get the same back, and probably all the previous "bad" they sent me that I had previously tolerated, back at the same time as well - yes i had it sort of backwards - do unto others as you **would** have them do unto you - seee! - i got it right eventually... but I could never understand the whole crusades...

actually, I got the meek would inherit the earth from Monty Python,

Oh, it's the meek! Blessed are the meek! Oh, that's nice, isn't it? I'm glad they're getting something, 'cause they have a hell of a time.--[Monty Python]

in fact I think my first twenty years of biblical exposure was mostly Monty Python and a bible that my grand parents had when i was seven or something, mostly. There's little doubt in my mind as to why christianity is mostly hilarious to me


there's something there... if you want to destroy a child's concept of christianity... Life of Brian will help a lot!


this was a spin off of the "me is no atheist" blog because that blog was so long, it needed to be split up... mostly written, 4th July 2009, mostly .....