Pastor Rick Warren Knows Why You Became an Atheist

Wow. It’s all become so clear all of a sudden.

Don’t many people become Christians because of hurt? I.e. they’re at rock bottom and call out to God and join a church? And sometimes that does mark the point where their life legitimately changes for the better, although acknowledging to someone (even an imaginary friend) that they need help and joining a supportive community are undoubtedly a huge part of that.

At least atheists rarely if ever try and spread the word through homeless shelters and addiction programs. (As in, while there are secular shelters and addiction programs, they aren’t out there to try and persuade the clients anything about the existence or non existence of God).

I’m always offended by these type of comments. They just assume that all atheists are converts from one religion or another.

Some of us are lucky enough to have had parents who didnt indoctrinate us in any religion at all.

So, according to Warren, it’s not ok to use arguments to validate a lack of belief, but it’s ok for him to make arguments to validate his belief. Don’t you just love double standards.

But really, he’s just saying the old “atheists hate god” line. Which we know is BS. I’m sure a lot of us hate the mysoginist, homophobic, genocidal, slavery promoting, rapist character Yahweh in that story book, the Bible though, but that’s not the same thing, and he knows it. He is deliberately intellectually dishonest.

People become atheists because of Christians like Rick Warren, then seek friends like Hemant to validate the belief that you can be good without god!

Rick Warren is an pudgy jackass.

I am an atheist that was raised a fundamentalist. My family, all the people in the local church and the wider church community were wonderful people. I respect many of them to this day. No one there hurt me, abused me or caused me pain. No hard feelings, but I just don’t believe in god any more.

So from my perspective Warren’s statement is self-validating bullshit.

Ah yes, Doctor Rick Warren, world famous psychologist, farts and his devoted clinicians praise his deep insight into human behavior.

Is there any forum where I can tell Rick Warren what a pompous, willfully ignorant blowhard he is, and he’ll actually hear it? Probably nobody can get to him up in that ivory tower of self-righteous certainty.

The quickest way to make a complete ass of yourself is to offer unsolicited amateur psychoanalysis. I’m a psychotherapist, and I won’t speculate on what and why people think and feel without first getting to know them very well as individuals first, and then only when really pressed, and then only with big qualifiers.

Judging from the dozens and dozens of letters I’ve received in Ask Richard, the majority of the “hurt” experienced by atheists comes long after they have freed themselves from their faith, and they are being treated like crap by their loving Christian families.

Hey Rick: You became a big, fat phony preacher with the ethics of a used car salesman because your mommy made you eat Brussels sprouts.

Unfortunately, there are people who are atheist/agnostic/skeptic purely because of disillusionment with religion or because they’ve never given it much thought. They don’t actually embrace reason; they just reject Christianity or haven’t gotten around to religion yet.

These are the ones who have the conversions to Christianity and then are trumpeted as “former atheists” who “reasoned their way to one god or another.” And then they enunciate arguments for Bible-Based Christianity that would convince no one.

Because these are the only atheists a Christian would ordinarily talk to, Christians think they represent the majority of atheists. I think that’s why there are so many misconceptions about atheists.

Examples include Kirk Cameron, Lee Strobel, and C.S. Lewis.

Littlejohn, you were brainwashed, while a child that subjected to Christianity is being brought up in the Truth.

In other words, hypocrisy, just like as others pointed out that it is joyous when ones turns to Christianity because of being hurt.

Yeah. It’s not because I want to live immorally. To the contrary, in my absence of belief I aspire to be the most humane person possible, whereas before all I ever cared about was fulfilling duties and avoiding hellish retribution.

I became an atheist because Christianity stopped making sense to me. Doubt began with my realization that God never actually did any of the stuff for people that I was raised being told that he does (See faith healing, for example), and it went on from there.

People become Christians because Rick Warren scams them with his profit-driven new-age spiritual bullshit, then disparage atheists because it’s easier than being intellectually honest.

140 characters:
Ppl become xtians ’cause R Warren scams them with his $ driven BS, then disparage atheists ’cause it’s easier than intellectual honesty.

I’m a bit embarrassed to present the E-mail I sent to Pastor Rick, but I was so put off (I’m being nice here.) I had to do something.
I’ll admit I was a bit flummoxed; the E-mail does ramble a bit. Oh Andrew S., I borrowed you well put response. (Sorry, I didn’t give credit – didn’t claim it was mine either. All apologies.)

The E-Mail:

Dear Pastor Warren,

It is my sincere hope that this E-mail reaches you. I have my doubts.

I find your Twitter propagated assertion, “People become atheists because of
hurt, then seek intellectual arguments to validate their desire to live without
God.”, simple minded, deeply offensive and beneath the intellectual platform on
which your flock believes you stand.

Simply stating some harebrained hypothesis, that you must no is not always true.
(I’ll admit that this sequence of events does sometime occur.)

I would never propose that “People become theists because of hurt, then seek
emotional arguments to quell their fear of living in a world without God.” Even
this statement must, to some extent be true at times. But I don’t put anyone’s
beliefs, and how they manged to come by the beliefs in a “on size fit all”
package.

You stated you opinion, with no substantiating evidence. (Did you do a survey,
ask ex-atheists of you flock or get a divine revelation?) So, in like fashion, I
will not provide any substantiation to my claim that “Almost no atheists are formed as a result of ‘hurt'”

I would like a response; better yet and apology, if not a stammering explanation
of how you miss-Twittered or that WE are reading you Twitter post out of context.

Do yourself a favor. Dispel the belief held by most of us; that theist in general and Christians in particular are only capable of processing their world in the most simple of terms, in only shades of black and white. (No black and white are not metaphorical in this context – I hope you can appreciate why I felt the need to spell this out.)

Sincerely,

Wayne Carl Ficke II (There goes my alias)

(Swayed by Science, Private school miss-education and my perceived lack of
fundamental/verifiable evidence, my subsequent re-reading and examining of the
Bible and the atrocities and contradictions found therein, the History of it’s official compilation, and the works that did not make the cut. . . . (No hurt or personal tragedies here brother)

I’ll let you know if/when I get any response.

So I can’t be an atheist for any other reason than I found out how hurtful people can be (amplified by my brain being fucked up at handling social situations)? How does God figure in that at all?

I suppose I’m mad at God for letting me have defects. *rolls eyes*

I’ll call Warren’s argument the Argumentum ad Vulnus, the Appeal to Hurt.

People become Christians because they fear death, then embrace the ideas of afterlife and divine sacrifice to excuse their behavior in life.

I like this one the best!

How about…

“People can become X for many reasons. Don’t pigeonhole people just to reduce your cognitive dissonance.”

I’m not even an atheist … but if I’m edging that way, the initial impetus came much more from people like Rick Warren (and, more to the point in my case, a non-trivial percentage of Catholic bishops) than from Dawkins, Stenger, or anyone else on the atheist side of the fence.

Also: From personal experience, it seems to me that many people do embrace a faith for reasons that have nothing to do with, ah, reason, then rationalise their decisions after the fact.

Rick Warren knows why you became an atheist, where you’re sleeping, and knows if you’re awake.

He also knows if you’ve been bad or good, because he’s judgmental like that.

My reaction to Rick Warren’s twitter post is simply “Yeah, so what?”

@Viggo:
I don’t agree that people’s natural state is atheism, and theism is a layer of garbage over it. I think it would be difficult or impossible to choose a point in time where a person occupies his “natural state.” People are born without logic, reason, etc. but those things are very much a part of our “natural state” (though not exclusive to us, of course). That doesn’t mean that religion is true, or that it’s desirable in the 21st century. But I don’t think atheists have reverted or retained a natural human state in any meaningful way.

No, I became an atheist because someone informed me me my peepee was dirty–or so I was told.

Isn’t it good we have others to enlighten us on such matters?

I left the religion I was raised in because their rules were stupid. From a Xtian perspective, perhaps I wanted to ‘sin’ more, but I for the life of me couldn’t figure out why god cared where a man stuck his penis. Then I looked into witchcraft, because it’s very woman-empowering. But that was too clique-ish like any other group, so I became a lesbian and then went to college, and then became an atheist. My path is not especially interesting, but I was never hurt–only deeply offended by anti-woman bs preached, although not practiced in my family.

I really do believe that people become Christians out of hurt and fear. But maybe that generalization isn’t any more helpful than Dick Warren’s. (Love his new nickname, btw)

Interesting (and by interesting I mean entirely wrong). Becoming an atheist was what hurt – it separated me from my family, from most of my friends, made me into something that they would pity and be upset by. It made me lose my security that something wonderful was waiting for me, my warm feeling that the creator of the universe loved me, the knowledge that I had an important purpose in the world. Methinks Rick doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, no surprise.

LOL! I could only see the title when reading the post on Christian dating ads on my little netbook and thought here it goes again — the you’re angry at “God” accusation. I half hoped I was wrong and it wouldn’t be as boring as that but, of course, it was. Though how you’re supposed to be angry at someone who doesn’t exist is mystifying.

In the name of totally honesty, though, as I’ve shared previously, the escape from my childhood indoctrination took 10 years during which I went from Christian to Jewish to Agnostic to Atheist. The final leap that got me to be able to say out loud there is no “God” was in anger. When I found out my daughter’s lovely Christian father (yes, I point that out because I do get rather pissed off by the constant proclaimations that Christians make better parents, just ask my daughter) molested her when she was three. I looked at my beautiful, smart, funny, personable little girl who loved everyone and asked if there was a “God” how could he let a thing like this happen to an innocent little child and then said out loud for the first time (and I admit rather angrily), “There is no God!”

But, hell, that was really just the end I was already coming to. I was getting awful tired of brushing the question off when people asked if I believed in “God” with a flippant, “Don’t know, don’t care.” Then explaining when they were aghast and actually had the courage to ask how I could not care with the reply that if “God” did exist and couldn’t forgive me my doubt and throw me in hell for it even though I was a good person then that was a “God” I wanted nothing to do with anyway. This argument was starting to sound stupid even to me. It really was saying there is no “God” but I didn’t have the courage to say it out loud until that dreadful day.

I do think it’d have come in time, probably a matter of months (can’t really know how long since that’s not the way it went down) even if the ex had turned out to be what he pretended to be to catch me and what I saw in him that he did not see in himself. If he had really been what I believed him to be instead of the monster he actually was.

So, no, I’m not angry at “God” and I don’t disbelieve because I was hurt by a whacky abusive fundy of a mother and a sick fuck that I was stupid/naive enough to marry and have a baby with. It took 10 years of long, hard thought and reading the Buybull and finding it incredible to get me to disbelief.

People become atheists because of hurt, then seek intellectual arguments to validate their desire to live without God.

Obvious proof rick warren can’t see outside his own frame of reference. He assumes atheists are atheists for the same reason he’s a christian.

that should have read:
Rick Warren become a theist because of… , then seeks (seemingly) intellectual arguments to validate his desire to believe in God.

I’m guessing this reason will apply to why people stop believing in all kinds of beings that have no evidence of existance. This means everyone stops believing in Santa Claus because they didn’t get that present they wanted on the holidays, and Leprechauns because they tripped on their way to the end of the rainbow, and the Loch Ness Monster because they got water up their nose?

Anecdotally, I became atheist on insight gathered from Feast of Pentecost sermon where God decides to package and franchise his religion out to the gentiles.

Why would God need a business plan?

I struggled to leave my fundamentalist faith – I didn’t want to leave behind what I now see as very powerful coping mechanisms of an afterlife, a belief that praying matters and changes things, the comfort of a “benevolent” deity watching over me (and my finances, decisions, circumstances). Giving all that up was the last thing I wanted. But the evidence and the reasoning kept piling up and suddenly I was actually studying the book I’d been “studying” for decades. How did I not care about the proscribed suffering and killing of slaves, the killing of non-virgins, genocides and killing of homosexuals? How did I not notice that people continue to use that book in modern times to validate these things (civil war, gay bashing). How did I ignore all that for so long?

I’m hurt over my own prolonged ignorance. I’m hurt and regretful about the pain my beliefs caused others. Not the fact that my ex-husband (outwardly devout and respected in the church) raped me while we were preparing to be married. It was beginning to occur to me that this book was FUBAR when I was the one that got to wear the scarlet letter when we divorced. I forgave him, but what the book concluded about me was unforgivable. Jesus couldn’t even be recorded consistently in how he deemed people who divorced should be labeled – there are multiple versions, but in all of them I am condemned for leaving my un-marriage. But it really hit home when I thought of all the women who are (and were, observable by Jesus) beaten within an inch of their lives that aren’t afforded a divorce without also being labeled as adulteresses upon remarriage, along with the people who marry them. And adulterers go to hell.

Then an old Christian man plowed through a farmer’s market in Santa Monica, killing and wounding hundreds. In his confusion he mistook the gas pedal for the brake for several minutes, witnessing his own destruction with horror. The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, just and loving god didn’t perform a miracle to spare the man who had served him his entire life. If he could part the red sea certainly he could slip this man’s foot a few inches to the left, give him a moment of clarity in thought, keep him home that day through a series of consequences (cut his gas line?), warn the people with a still small voice, switch the brake and gas pedal functionality or warned them with a booming voice from heaven. But he didn’t. And that’s why I began paying attention to all the inconsistencies, incongruities and started listening to rational people’s arguments. And that’s how I became an atheist. No hurt here. It was more out of logic and compassion for others – and an ability to notice and observe and think.

I’m reminded of a comment i read on an atheist website last autumn. After the “financial meltdown” of 2008, The New York Times did an article on how many middle class and wealthy folks were supposedly flocking to many local churches, due to fellings of fear brought on by their financial insecurity. An atheist commenter told of attending a “intro to Christianity” class with his Christian convert wife. When asked if he had ever experienced hardship in his life, he admitted that no, his was the rare life where everything had gone right, and he just saw no evidence for god’s existence, therefore, he was an atheist. The woman leading the class said, “You have had it so easy, that you have never had to depend on god, and if god would humble and break you, you might believe in him.” This is the opposite of what most people like Warren argue. How convenient.

@Michael E

They’re not “true Christians” then.

…is what an a-hole like Warren would probably say

How does:”People become Christians because their parents made them go to church, then reject intellectual arguments because of social pressure.” mischaracterize most Christians. It is absolutely the case for most Christians. In fact you could replace Christian with Islam/Muslim and have a generally accurate view of the Muslim world, where in some cases apostasy will lead to a death sentence.

@spink

Purpose-Driven Life?

Have a copy too, and it’s a good book.

…for propping up my PC’s wobbly desk.

Rick Warren must be even more mentally challenged than I thought. Any dumbass, half-wit, inbred, hick redneck could tell you that anybody could use “hurt” to explain anybody’s reasoning for anything; after all, who here hasn’t been hurt in their lifetime?
(No offense to mentally challenged, dumbass, half-wit, inbred, hick, and/or redneck people out there. I’m sure you’re a fine people and that Rick Warren does not speak on your behalf.)

I just have to shake my head at this kind of ignorance. Rick Warren imagines that all atheists are former theists. Not only that, he imagines that we’re all former Christians to boot.

He probably doesn’t care about the truth, but I never “became” an atheist. I always was one. I have no emotional connection to religion. It’s just not part of my background. I was never exposed to any religion enough to be “hurt” by it. My childhood reaction to religion was one of bafflement or bemusement, not anger or hurt. On the contrary, almost all the theists I came into contact with were perfectly nice people. I just didn’t understand how they could believe the things that they believed. In fact, I still don’t, LOL.