Post by Alan McDougall on Jun 1, 2015 4:49:52 GMT -5
I have seldom expressed myself so fully on a forum, but felt "Moved" to post it here?
My position on religion as young boy was atheistic and my philosophy was live for today, because tomorrow you might die. Death to me was simply extinction of my consciousness, into eternal nothingness. This did not frighten me, because of course I was young and thought I still had an eternity before me to live and I was going to squeeze every drop of fun out of life before that day. I used to tell my friends I will live this way until the moment just before I die, and then only then make amends with God, if he exists.
As a youth I had absolutely no interest in religion and I was put off to the extreme by the silly excusive cult the “Two by Two’s that had held both my parents into a fear of going to hell. This cult was so exclusive that unless one joined them and stuck completely to the beliefs, one would end up in what they said was “A lost Eternity”, which was really a nice way of saying hell. I think that at the most worldwide, there might have been as little as a few thousand of these sad people.
If their teaching were true, then God’s workmanship, when he created humanity, was very inept indeed, it means that out of the 7 billion people he made presently living on planet earth, nearly all are rejects to be sent to the scrap heap of hell. However, according to these exclusive cults, god does not take the blame for his own mistakes he so obviously did when he made man out of the dust of the earth, he apportions all the blame for his shabby work on every human he has created, except of course, the few exclusive cult members. If God exists he must be infinitely intelligent and the scenario just mentioned would not take such an illogical step with his own creation. Of course I admit that God is most likely infinite in all aspect of his being and would be sovereign and able to anything he wanted to do with his creation, without asking its permission!
The likes of “Two by Two’s as well as every other ridiculous exclusive cult or exclusive religion, are in their opinion all going go to heaven watch to from there in eternal happiness, while the huge majority or some 99.99999% of the rest of humanity are sent to burn in hell, day and night, forever and forever. And to make this even more ridiculous, what about all the humans that have lived since civilisation began, estimated by some as many as 60 million souls?
A relative of mine in just one example of religious exclusivity and stupidity. He would always phone or contact me with great joy the moment some great calamity or catastrophe happened, where sometimes thousands of innocent people died, which meant to him that the Lord was coming to fetch him soon, and to hell with the rest of humanity.
I tend to become radical if I believe what I perceive is the real truth, in a way this was evident with my swimming, body building, shot putting and javelin throwing as a boy. I would practice for hours and hours, becoming completely obsessed with my endeavours, in which I imagined myself as some great international athlete. While others saw me just practising over and over again, in my mind I was in an imaginary arena competing with other world class imaginary athletes.
In the 1970’s I thought I had found the absolute truth as far as God and religion were concerned and accepted and embraced this belief in the absolute, extreme, fanatical and radical way, bordering on obsession and fixation. I began to think I was some sort of a latter day prophet and gave out some amazing predictions, which were more psychic that God sourced prophesies.
In my opinion it was this extreme religious fanaticism that was the trigger that unhinged me mentally from the age of 38, leading to a 30 year battle with manic depression.
It was then to my horror, I found out happenings in the church life that I simply could not reconcile in my mind. In the little church where I was an active member at the time, the pastor or minister Pastor Rodney Burger was caught stealing from the congregation. In addition, I found out to my deep distress that many of the evangelist and preachers that I had also trusted implicitly, as men of God and of impeccable honour and revealers of the absolute truth, where in reality nothing more than lying, deceitful, hypocritical, charlatans, frauds and thieves, living lives of luxury at the expense of church their church members.
Whom they hypnotized and persuaded by preaching hell and brimstone and death, or informing these gullible people that if they gave an amount to the church , God would reimburse them a hundredfold more back later, which in my opinion never happened. Using God as some sort of a slot machine, put in a penny, and get back a pound?
Unable to reconcile what was to me, impossible to reconcile, revelation, led to me going into long cycles of non-stop rapid thinking. In order to cope I began to unhinge mentally, which later led into severe manic psychosis at Kreil during my retirement. Because I could not cope with this ceaseless non-stop thinking I did the only thing I could to survive and not commit suicide, I withdrew into myself and subconsciously tried to resolve this enigma, inside the confines of my mind, becoming increasingly and more distant from my friends and loved ones.
Think about it, put yourself in my shoes! The way my mind works is when I accept something as true and honourable, I embrace it completely, absolutely to the point of obsession and accept it without question and cant be moved from my position. In fact I become so radical and obsessesed about it that I try to convince everyone I meet to come know this absolute truth that I now know is absolute truth.
To illustrate my disillusion with exclusive religion, a case in point was Jimmy Swagggard, a hell and brimstone evangelist, who screamed and shouted from the pulpit against all sins, especially sexual sins and depravity, he was caught red handed at a brothel trying to secure the favours of a prostitute for the night. A few days later in front of his congregation , he wept and wept asking say over and over again “ I have sinned I have sinned” He pleaded with God and his congregation to forgive him, and I think many of them did forgive him for the terrible sin he had done. However, this sad story did not end there, a week or so after his desperate plea for forgiveness, a police officer pulled over a car for a suspected traffic violation, who do you suppose he found inside the car?
No less than Jimmy Swagggard and a prostitute in both in a very in indecent and compromising situation. Jimmy got off with a warning from the law, but this hypocrite did not learn from his mistakes or from the very words he had preached and screamed about for over 30 years. Twice this hypocrite was caught doing the same act of depravity resulting finally in most of his congregation, not forgiving him and leaving his church, extremely disillusioned like I was. However, unbelievably, some of his congregation overlooked all his discretion and remained his followers. This was a person who I had admired as a man of God, who preached ethics and morality and now I found out he was nothing but a secret sexual pervert. After that I could never listen, his preaching or to his music and felt his Christian calling was removed from him by God. Off course he was/is not the only hypocrite preacher out there Many of them are puffed up with pride at their supposed wisdom, became extremely wealthy, residing in huge mansions their own airplanes and travelled the world first class to sprout their nonsense to the world at large.
I am positive that if I had never gone to a physiatrist or if he had not put me on tranquilizers I would have got myself back to mental, and health , by the way I had always used to help me out of stress, exercise and body building.
To be able to work, live and function, in some way, I angrily blamed and rejected anything about the God and religion, which had disillusioned and failed me so badly. Unconsciously I reversed to my previous atheistic position.
If I were not in the fog of tranquilizers , I would have still rejected religion and God and religion back then , repositioned myself and my belief system by giving me some space to think about my life in a rational way.
However because I remained addicted to benzodiazepine for nearly thirty years, I was only able to rethink about my religious convictions in a sane and rational way after I stopped them completely some years ago.
I have at time of writing being free from mania and have stopped all bad addictive drugs except the necessary medication needed to sustain my health.
I will no longer attend any church, or embrace any religious belief that I consider irrational or exclusive, but I accept that Jesus was/is who he said he was and that there is indeed a God in which I can put my trust. I am no longer obsessed about anything and quietly say my prayers, at night, like I did as a little boy, go to sleep and trust “if I die before I wake I trust the Lord my Soul to take
Alan McDougall
My position on religion as young boy was atheistic and my philosophy was live for today, because tomorrow you might die. Death to me was simply extinction of my consciousness, into eternal nothingness. This did not frighten me, because of course I was young and thought I still had an eternity before me to live and I was going to squeeze every drop of fun out of life before that day. I used to tell my friends I will live this way until the moment just before I die, and then only then make amends with God, if he exists.
As a youth I had absolutely no interest in religion and I was put off to the extreme by the silly excusive cult the “Two by Two’s that had held both my parents into a fear of going to hell. This cult was so exclusive that unless one joined them and stuck completely to the beliefs, one would end up in what they said was “A lost Eternity”, which was really a nice way of saying hell. I think that at the most worldwide, there might have been as little as a few thousand of these sad people.
If their teaching were true, then God’s workmanship, when he created humanity, was very inept indeed, it means that out of the 7 billion people he made presently living on planet earth, nearly all are rejects to be sent to the scrap heap of hell. However, according to these exclusive cults, god does not take the blame for his own mistakes he so obviously did when he made man out of the dust of the earth, he apportions all the blame for his shabby work on every human he has created, except of course, the few exclusive cult members. If God exists he must be infinitely intelligent and the scenario just mentioned would not take such an illogical step with his own creation. Of course I admit that God is most likely infinite in all aspect of his being and would be sovereign and able to anything he wanted to do with his creation, without asking its permission!
The likes of “Two by Two’s as well as every other ridiculous exclusive cult or exclusive religion, are in their opinion all going go to heaven watch to from there in eternal happiness, while the huge majority or some 99.99999% of the rest of humanity are sent to burn in hell, day and night, forever and forever. And to make this even more ridiculous, what about all the humans that have lived since civilisation began, estimated by some as many as 60 million souls?
A relative of mine in just one example of religious exclusivity and stupidity. He would always phone or contact me with great joy the moment some great calamity or catastrophe happened, where sometimes thousands of innocent people died, which meant to him that the Lord was coming to fetch him soon, and to hell with the rest of humanity.
I tend to become radical if I believe what I perceive is the real truth, in a way this was evident with my swimming, body building, shot putting and javelin throwing as a boy. I would practice for hours and hours, becoming completely obsessed with my endeavours, in which I imagined myself as some great international athlete. While others saw me just practising over and over again, in my mind I was in an imaginary arena competing with other world class imaginary athletes.
In the 1970’s I thought I had found the absolute truth as far as God and religion were concerned and accepted and embraced this belief in the absolute, extreme, fanatical and radical way, bordering on obsession and fixation. I began to think I was some sort of a latter day prophet and gave out some amazing predictions, which were more psychic that God sourced prophesies.
In my opinion it was this extreme religious fanaticism that was the trigger that unhinged me mentally from the age of 38, leading to a 30 year battle with manic depression.
It was then to my horror, I found out happenings in the church life that I simply could not reconcile in my mind. In the little church where I was an active member at the time, the pastor or minister Pastor Rodney Burger was caught stealing from the congregation. In addition, I found out to my deep distress that many of the evangelist and preachers that I had also trusted implicitly, as men of God and of impeccable honour and revealers of the absolute truth, where in reality nothing more than lying, deceitful, hypocritical, charlatans, frauds and thieves, living lives of luxury at the expense of church their church members.
Whom they hypnotized and persuaded by preaching hell and brimstone and death, or informing these gullible people that if they gave an amount to the church , God would reimburse them a hundredfold more back later, which in my opinion never happened. Using God as some sort of a slot machine, put in a penny, and get back a pound?
Unable to reconcile what was to me, impossible to reconcile, revelation, led to me going into long cycles of non-stop rapid thinking. In order to cope I began to unhinge mentally, which later led into severe manic psychosis at Kreil during my retirement. Because I could not cope with this ceaseless non-stop thinking I did the only thing I could to survive and not commit suicide, I withdrew into myself and subconsciously tried to resolve this enigma, inside the confines of my mind, becoming increasingly and more distant from my friends and loved ones.
Think about it, put yourself in my shoes! The way my mind works is when I accept something as true and honourable, I embrace it completely, absolutely to the point of obsession and accept it without question and cant be moved from my position. In fact I become so radical and obsessesed about it that I try to convince everyone I meet to come know this absolute truth that I now know is absolute truth.
To illustrate my disillusion with exclusive religion, a case in point was Jimmy Swagggard, a hell and brimstone evangelist, who screamed and shouted from the pulpit against all sins, especially sexual sins and depravity, he was caught red handed at a brothel trying to secure the favours of a prostitute for the night. A few days later in front of his congregation , he wept and wept asking say over and over again “ I have sinned I have sinned” He pleaded with God and his congregation to forgive him, and I think many of them did forgive him for the terrible sin he had done. However, this sad story did not end there, a week or so after his desperate plea for forgiveness, a police officer pulled over a car for a suspected traffic violation, who do you suppose he found inside the car?
No less than Jimmy Swagggard and a prostitute in both in a very in indecent and compromising situation. Jimmy got off with a warning from the law, but this hypocrite did not learn from his mistakes or from the very words he had preached and screamed about for over 30 years. Twice this hypocrite was caught doing the same act of depravity resulting finally in most of his congregation, not forgiving him and leaving his church, extremely disillusioned like I was. However, unbelievably, some of his congregation overlooked all his discretion and remained his followers. This was a person who I had admired as a man of God, who preached ethics and morality and now I found out he was nothing but a secret sexual pervert. After that I could never listen, his preaching or to his music and felt his Christian calling was removed from him by God. Off course he was/is not the only hypocrite preacher out there Many of them are puffed up with pride at their supposed wisdom, became extremely wealthy, residing in huge mansions their own airplanes and travelled the world first class to sprout their nonsense to the world at large.
I am positive that if I had never gone to a physiatrist or if he had not put me on tranquilizers I would have got myself back to mental, and health , by the way I had always used to help me out of stress, exercise and body building.
To be able to work, live and function, in some way, I angrily blamed and rejected anything about the God and religion, which had disillusioned and failed me so badly. Unconsciously I reversed to my previous atheistic position.
If I were not in the fog of tranquilizers , I would have still rejected religion and God and religion back then , repositioned myself and my belief system by giving me some space to think about my life in a rational way.
However because I remained addicted to benzodiazepine for nearly thirty years, I was only able to rethink about my religious convictions in a sane and rational way after I stopped them completely some years ago.
I have at time of writing being free from mania and have stopped all bad addictive drugs except the necessary medication needed to sustain my health.
I will no longer attend any church, or embrace any religious belief that I consider irrational or exclusive, but I accept that Jesus was/is who he said he was and that there is indeed a God in which I can put my trust. I am no longer obsessed about anything and quietly say my prayers, at night, like I did as a little boy, go to sleep and trust “if I die before I wake I trust the Lord my Soul to take
Alan McDougall