Al-Anon pt 3: Fertile Ground

And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: a sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.
- Luke 8:4-7

Al-Anon's self defeatist message found fertile ground with me. There were so many of this cult's ideas I'd already absorbed from mainstream and fundamentalist Christianity.

Inherently Defective
Al-Anon taught me, like Christianity, that I am inherently flawed and defective, and only my Higher Power can fix this. No amount of effort, learning, therapy, wisdom, or charity I do can make up for the flaws I was born with - a sinful nature or codependency. However, confessing my powerlessness, my sinfulness is only the first step. In the case of both religions, this creates the need for the group or church to fill. I must attend meetings (or services) at least once a week if I expect God to fix me. After all, I must do my own part of my salvation too, even though my part will never be sufficient. I am fallen and I am powerless. It's up to God (as I understand him) to come save me now.

Learned Helplessness
"All have fallen short of the glory of God" and "We admitted we were powerless." Both of these messages, from Christianity and Al-Anon, take away our impetus to create positive change in our own lives. In Al-Anon I was told repeatedly to "Let go and let God" and to just leave other people to their own devices and character defects. I needed to keep "my side of the street clean" and not worry about that mote in my brother's eye (or bottle in my husband's hand.) At a time when I needed help and empowerment the most, I had my legs kicked out from under me by a bunch of bitter people who probably would have been far happier if they'd just left their alcoholic spouses and bypassed the Steps completely.

Acceptable Abuse

They had stayed, so I should stay. I "shouldn't make any major decisions for the first six months" - really the first year, but I had it wrong at the time. I found out, after telling my sponsor I'd finally broken things off with my husband who belittled, raped, and abused me, that I was really supposed to stick in there another six months before making that choice, since I hadn't yet completed the steps or attained Serenity. I remember feeling profound relief that no one had told me that before hand, because i didn't think I could take another six months of torture, but I was glad I didn't have to knowingly choose to go against one of Al-Anon's principles in order to escape it.

As a Christian child, I knew it was right and godly of my parents to abuse me physically and emotionally. After all, they were following the Bible and Focus on the Family, so they must be right. It simply wasn't safe enough to question authority for me to even consider it. My brother tried that, and he'd been kicked out of the house at 12. But the idea that I should take a certain amount of abuse as my lot in life, and what's more that I'd somehow earned the abuse through my own actions, was an idea I learned early and it took decades to break. My family treated me horribly, and I was fighting an uphill battle to become a person and not just a cult clone. I married badly.

But Al-Anon would have me believe that my fledgling, ill-conceived and frankly never willingly consummated marriage (spousal rape doesn't count) held the weight of my entire integrity, my word, my vow. They made it more serious than it was. I mean yes, I wanted to have a family with him. I married him. But I quickly learned that he was an absolutely horrible human being. He got so drunk one night, he peed out the living room window screen because he thought it was the bathroom toilet. And that wasn't the first time he'd made an error of that kind. (There was also, for instance, his ex-roommate's vacuum cleaner.)

Al-Anon told me I needed to take the focus off of him and his actions, and instead I needed to look for my part in his drinking. Bear in mind, we'd been married all of 10 weeks when I separated from him, taking my son and moving into my mother's. That's when I started going to Al-Anon. I wasn't even with him for three months before leaving, but because I thought Al-Anon told me to wait six months (really a year), I spent twice as long separated from him and trying to work things out as I did living with him as man and wife.

God Micro-Manages

I had been taught to believe in the power of prayer before I'd been taught to read. I believed that I had both free will and a sinful nature, and that the god who gave me free will would intervene in my life and others. Even though God had some overarching multi-millenial Divine Plan, he would fiddle around with the daily minutiae like lost keys, insufficient funds, or bad traffic, if I asked him to.

Bill Wilson's Higher Power is a meddling god. Free will is talked about much less often in 12 Step programs than traditional Sunday morning churches (sorry Adventists.) "Self will" is considered a sin in Al-Anon, the way that the "Adam nature" or "flesh" was sinful in my childhood brand of learned helplessness.

Perpetual Confession
In Christianity I was taught that when I "sinned", the real problem wasn't the people I may have hurt. No, no. The great offense of course was that I'd sinned against God. He was the one who I had hurt the most. Remember, he died for my sins, so the least I could do is make his death meaningless by never sinning again. Since that was bound to be impossible (as Christianity generally is), my only alternative was confession for each and every offense.

At deliverance camp the pastor had us write down a detailed list of all our sins, past and present, great and small. In Al-Anon this would be known as a "fearless and searching moral inventory" or the 4th Step. Christianity had already taught me that I have been judged, and found wanting in the balance. Al-Anon just continued the lesson.

Christianity was fundamentally destructive to my self-esteem as a child, teenager, and young woman. Original sin is a terrible weight to assign every newborn on the planet, and I don't see how I worshiped a god for so long who I believed did exactly that.

Marriage is Sacred (Except When it's Not)

My mother was divorced. My father was not a good husband so, well and good. He was feckless and unfaithful and on one occasion - and one only - he struck her. I could understand and at least some other Christians could as well. My mother had to write a letter to the Christian school we attended, justifying her divorce, in order to get a job teaching computer classes to the high school students. But they had given her the position, and treated her well once she was hired.

My grandmother had been divorced twice. She absolutely should have left her second husband, a darker version of my father's same sins, much sooner than she did. But my grandfather, her first husband, was a good man. She left him because their daughter died at 10 weeks old of a congenital heart defect, and she couldn't be in that house a day longer. Marriage is sacred, unless you've got a good excuse.

In Al-Anon it was the same. The pressure to stay was subtle but constant. The greatest success story couple at my home meeting had been married for 50 years - 27 of them abusive, 23 in 12 step groups. These were the role models of everyone in the room, and so all advice I got was tinged with this poison of the mind - that if you just followed the steps, even the worst marriage could become enviable. Yet if an old-timer, automatically respected for their longevity in the cult, had been divorced three times or more, it was none of my concern and I needed to focus on my self, and work a selfish program, and not try to control people and situations in my life. (Because after all, doing that makes your life unmanageable.)

Some Feelings are Wrong

As a child, I was taught it was a sin to fear, since fear meant not trusting God. Al-Anon told me the same thing. FEAR was nothing more than "false evidence appearing real" and I really needed to just focus on working my Steps and turning my will over to my Higher Power. There was no sense in recognizing fear as a useful warning emotion, and investigating why I had the fears I did (including fears of my husband's possible behavior.)

I was also told "in the rooms" that resentment was always, always, without exception or fail WRONG. The "defilements" of my demon-haunted childhood were replaced with the "resentments" of my 20s. These were the things (almost without fail, just as in Christianity, done by others or merely by environment) holding me back from my "spiritual awakening" and serenity. Resentments were so bad and so inherently self-destructive that I should not only get rid of all current ones, but should do everything in my (powerless) power to prevent them. I remember the day I first heard this sentence and thought it was brilliant.

"Expectations are premeditated resentments."

If I didn't place expectations on people, like the alcoholic, then I wouldn't be so disappointed. Al-Anon taught me, like Christianity, to lower my standards for how well I should be treated. After all, I was a sinner. I was sick - just as sick as the alcoholic, even though my "disease" of codependency had no physical effects at all.

It Will Never Get Better

Even though I was saved by the grace of Jesus (and certainly not by works, so that no man may boast!) I would still always struggle with sin. Being a Christian doesn't make you perfect, just forgiven, and so I would constantly fail at perfection. Al-Anon told me that I had a spiritual disease of codependency, that I was sick and that I would always be sick, and that the best I could hope for was to let go and let god, and hope he did a better job of running my life than I did. After all, my "best thinking got me here" so it was obvious I was not an empowered person capable of making good decisions for myself.

Al-Anon is not a self-help group. It is a self-annihilation group. And it needs to be stopped.

More soon. This post took a lot out of me. Writing about my ex-husband is always extremely difficult. I have a whole mixture of emotions like betrayal, and fear, and humiliation (what the fuck was I thinking marrying that creep?) But I know writing will make me feel better, and I'm at least more emotionally capable of approaching those dark and scary stories now than I was a few months ago. Hopefully the writing flow continues and improves. Much love to all my Anteaters!

* Throughout the 12 Step posts I'll use certain slogans and phrases that were spoken a lot "in the rooms" (like "in the rooms" which refers to 12 Step meetings collectively.) Sometimes I'll remember to put air quotes around them, but sometimes I won't. Cults use buzzwords and slogans as thought-stopping devices, and it's only by recognizing them as such that we can strip them of power over us. So I will use the cult-speak of those days, in the hopes that current and former 12 Steppers who find these posts will be able to recognize in their own meetings and literature the things I'm saying.

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June 28, 1998

I swayed to the music, my hands raised skyward, singing and crying out to God, with tears streaming down my face. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Oh, I needed to turn back to him. My chest ached and I felt the weight of my betrayal.

I was doing things a good Christian girl shouldn't. I was skipping school, smoking pot and cigarettes, and worst of all, flirting with witchcraft. But not right here in this moment, in a wood frame room with hundreds of other convicted and crying teens at a Vineyard Christian Fellowship teen Bible camp in Georgia. Here, it was just me and Jesus - a time to get right with God.

At the far end of the open room, the band played and sang out prayers into the warm June night, as fireflies lit up past the four corners or the open-walled building frame. I could feel the Holy Spirit moving through the crowd, and I was overcome with emotion. Outside, rain began to pour.

"Oh, please Jesus, forgive me," I begged. "You are holy, holy, holy," I said aloud. It didn't seem strange at all to speak out loud to God; everyone around me was doing the same.

I focused on all the ways I wasn't pleasing God. My mind ran over a litany of my sins and transgressions, and I felt polluted by my sinful nature. I considered my recent interest in the occult. I believed witchcraft was real, even if most people who dabbled in it were total amateurs. That didn't mean Satan couldn't use the occasion, that open door, to infest them with demons. Yet, I sometimes read my horoscope, which I knew was wrong.

I looked down at my left hand. On my middle finger I wore a wrong that I thought God might not like. It was a silver band with a raised moon and stars, and a clear blue lacquer slapped over the top. It came from Claire's and probably sold for about $8. I can't remember if I bought it or stole it. I did quite a bit of that at 15.

I confessed my treachery to Jesus, sobbing anew. I found myself face down on the pine floor, prostrate before my God and my youth group. Compelled, I rose up and walked to one side of the open air room, toward the benches that lined the edges between the thick wood beams keeping up the roof. Leaning out into the wind and the rain, I chucked the ring with all my might, and as it arced into the air, a stroke of lightning lit the sky. He forgave me.

Over the course of that opening night worship service, kicking off a week's long Christian summer camp program, I tried desperately to get back to the comfortable feeling of closeness with Jesus I'd once known. Kids from my youth group, and from a group in Greensboro, North Carolina laid hands on me and prayed for me. Prayed that God would be the father I'd never known, prayed that I would follow His will, prayed that he would shower me with His love and His grace.

I spent three solid hours crying on the hard wood floor that night.

I think this is the kind of experience most Christians don't realize I've had, when I say I don't believe in their god. I did believe. Every element of a "relationship" you believe you have with Jesus, I thought I had. And it's not because I really was overcome with some holy ghost. I just believed it. I believed in Jesus and in repentance and in conviction and in the Rules. I believed in the holy ghost and that God tried to talk to me through both music and the weather. I believed the things I needed to believe to create an emotional experience like the one I had "with Jesus" that summer night in Georgia. Without those beliefs though, there's really no chance of a holy spirit "moving" through any crowd. You never see Christians "slain in the spirit" at the checkout, or else overcome by the Holy Spirit in their cubicle. No. Experiences like this are almost always confined to highly stressful or highly religious situations. Because the ghost isn't real, but the memory of it is.

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The Story is a Lie

I love when funny religious opportunities fall into my lap. I've been wasting far too much time on Facebook games (uh-huh, I know I'm lame, and that no one but me uses the word "lame" anymore.) Over in the side banner ads, I found this: You can add "The Story" to your personal blog or your church's website for FREE! Share the Good News with your friends and your community.

Thanks, I think I will. :)

Sadly, they don't really mean it about embedding it on your personal blog, at least not if your blog "is obscene, indecent, harassing or otherwise objectionable in the sole discretion of SpreadTruth; or... disparages, or reflects negatively upon, 'SpreadTruth.com/ ViewTheStory.com'" Ah, terms and conditions, how I loathe thee.

Doesn't it say something in that they're afraid to have people who don't already agree with them look at their story? They really only want you to spread the gospel among good Christian folks and church websites. Yeah, I'm sure that'll be real effective at recruiting new converts. (Cowards and morons, all.)

So, sadly, you'll have to settle for following this link. (As much fun as it would be to start a war with fundies, I'd rather it didn't begin by me violating a rule. I'll let them do that, as they are so pernicious at it.) Go look at it and I'll do a jigsaw puzzle while I wait for you.


*whistles*



You done? It's very slick looking, I must admit. They've definitely converted some good designers over the years. And it's a little friendlier than a Jack Chick comic, but not by much. Look closely at the page on "the Fall". I guess God's off the hook for amputees, since apparently everything bad in this world (including biologically evolved viruses - stick it creationists!) is the fault of one man and one woman. But I need to point this out, because I think it's important. This is their interpretation of the serpent tempting Eve (and by extension, Adam).

"Adam and Eve, the first humans... Because God is love and love cannot fully exist without the freedom to make choices (but it can partially exist?) God gave them the freedom to make choices - but with consequences."

Okay, parent lecture time: In order for kids to get good at making decisions, they have to have a lot of opportunities to practice that skill set. But you don't actually set your kid up for punishment - you offer two acceptable options and let the child choose between them. I let my son pick which out five t-shirts he wants to wear to school that day, and which pair of shoes. When he starts acting up at the pool, I ask him "Do you want to play nicely in the pool by the rules, or do you want to go home and play with your toys there?" Neither choice leads to negative consequences or punishment; I give him two "good" choices to pick from.

As he gets older, he'll be faced with much more complex decisions, with more serious consequences than wearing a clashing outfit in his class photo. Because he's getting so much early practice now, and building confidence in his ability to choose for himself, I expect he'll be pretty good at it. But I wouldn't offer him a "choice" with dire consequences, like those that are supposedly due to the Fall. I wouldn't place a loaded gun on my coffee table and say, "You can play with any toy in the room, but not that one." The chance that he might pick it up out of curiosity (not a desire to usurp me or rebel) and seriously injure himself is far too great for him to engage in such risky behavior - because I love him. God cannot both have placed the Tree in the Garden and be "Love". What He supposedly offered wasn't a choice; it was a trap.

Let's go further into what The Story has to say about Adam and Eve and the Snake.

One day Satan... told Adam and Eve a lie. He deceived them into thinking God was not good and did not have their best interest in mind. As a result, they willfully disobeyed God and broke the only rule He had given: not to eat the fruit of a specific tree. In rebellion Adam and Eve decided that they, not God, would determine what is right and what is wrong.

Well, see, that's just not true. I know this story very, very well. (I believed it was literal truth until a year and a half ago. Shut up, I know.) What the Bible actually says is that Satan told Adam and Eve that they would not die if they ate the fruit (which God had said) and that they would gain the knowledge of good and evil. Prior to this point, Adam and Even didn't have that knowledge - they had no sense of morality, or of right and wrong. That's the whole point of the story, so it bugs the hell outta me when Christians try to paint A&Es actions as intentional "willful" sin. They did not know good and evil. God punishes them for picking up the gun off the coffee table, when they don't even know that they aren't supposed to disobey him. Or if they were supposed to unquestioningly obey him, and the second they didn't they'd suffer all the "consequences" of the Fall, then that's not real love or real choice or real freedom either. It's a set up.

Furthermore, the last sentence irks me. "In rebellion Adam and Eve decided that they, not God, would determine what is right and what is wrong." Bible reading FAIL! It had nothing to do with the decision to take from god the moral judgment of "This is right, this is wrong" (which humans have always had - god(s) are imaginary). The story is about Adam and Eve gaining the pre-existing knowledge of what is good and what is not. This is a weird attempt at painting Adam and Eve as secularists or moral relativists or something. And any good atheist who's read his/her Bible (may I recommend Brick Testament and SAB for those who don't wanna pay a mint for the dead tree version?) knows that the crap in this e-mag is not the same as the crap that's in the "Good News".

Oh well, at least I chose their "Make a decision" button. (Of course, you automatically get checked as choosing "follow Christ" - there ARE NO CHOICES.) But at least I got to tell them I was reading, and hoped to place talk about their project extensively on my blog. Of course, you can't put links in your dialogue, so I just used it as my name instead. Here's the hilarious auto reply I got back:

Thanks angietheantitheist.blogspot.com! Your decision has been sent.
We will repsond to your message as soon as we can. We will respond via e-mail to angieantitheist@ gmail.c om.

Here's a direct reading of the first three books of Genesis, by the astonishingly funny Ricky Gervais.

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Demon Busters: Part 2

Back to the snark. (Original snark can be found here!) I guess I ought to explain why I'm calling this series "Demon Busters". It's because that's what shows up in the bottom of my browser window when I'm on their site (JesustheDeliverer.com). Of course, this reminds me that when I lived with my grandmother, I wasn't allowed to see the movie "Ghost Busters" because ghosts are demons, and demons are evil; ergo, "Ghost Busters" is evil. (Never mind that the title characters fight against supernatural baddies. This is the same woman who wouldn't let us watch Care Bears.)

Anyway, onto the rest of the "FAQs". Yesterday we got through the "explanations" for why poor health, lack of prosperity, depression and "clumsiness" are all caused by demon possession. Let's see what today's cockamamie has in store for us.

• Do you ever think thoughts that you feel are not your own?
• Do you ever say or do something that you didn’t mean to, and felt like, “The devil made me do it?”

Here's the insidious part of the whole Deliverance mindset. Leaders use "the demons made me do it" to distance themselves from their own crimes and moral shortcomings (think C Street). At the same time, lay people are entirely dependent on the deliverance counselors to keep them safe from invading thoughts, depression, "clumsiness", and - as you'll see later on - UFO abduction. (Yes, really.)

Demons manipulate our mind, our will and our emotions. They plant thoughts in our mind that will make us confused, and if we believe that those thoughts are ours, we might even act upon them (i.e. women who hear voices telling them to kill their children).

Ah, there's nothing quite like demonizing women with Post-Partum Depression! After all, it got Tom Cruise some (bad) press. And while I think it is important not to believe everything we think (ie, "Those people are talking about me") this kind of advice is what led me to think I was schizophrenic as a child. I never knew whether any given thought in my head was mine, the voice of Satan or a demon tempting me, or the Lord. This kind of thinking leads to insanity.

• Do you ever feel that you’re powerless to break off a destructive relationship – like, you just can’t do it - even though you want to or need to?
• Or, if you have ended the relationship, does the memory of that person frequently haunt you?

Ah yes, because pining after an ex is clearly a spiritual, rather than emotional, matter. And the only destructive relationship I'm thinking needs to be cut off right now is anybody's association with these Demon Busters.

• Do you ever strike your children or scream at them uncontrollably – but you really love them – and wonder why you are behaving this way?

There's nothing that Satan likes better than provoking family and marriage problems. In the case of children being abused, there might be demons both in the parents and the children that play on each other to provoke the abuse situation.

The abuse "situation". Notice how the words "abuser" and "abused" are left out? It's an abuse "situation". I love how the parents have zero responsibility for the abuse, as it's just demons in both the parents and kids fighting with each other! (I was raised and beaten by a woman who thought this way. Other children don't survive.) Notice also that things like therapy, family counseling, parenting classes, anger management, and psychotropic medication for the parents is not suggested. Nope, just casting out mommy and daddy's - and Junior's! - demons. You know, to stop the "situation".

• Do you ever feel that your wife wants to control and manipulate you and put you down? Do you ever feel that your wife wants to rule the roost, and you feel out of place in the marriage?

There's nothing that Satan likes better than provoking family and marriage problems... In the case of a controlling wife, what is working in the marriage is a demon called Jezebel. If the husband doesn't mind the wife controlling and manipulating, it's because he is overcome by a spirit called Ahab (see I Kings 21:25).

Feminist outrage... Commence! I guess equality is not a Christian family virtue.

• Are you a Christian who wants to live the way God wants you to live, but can’t seem to do it? Do you feel compelled to do things you know you shouldn’t do?
• Have you ever had a good Christian friend “pray” for you, but you really haven’t seen any results?

Well in the first instance, since Christianity operates by placing people under impossible standards and then crushes people with guilt for failing to meet these standards, I'm guessing most Christians would answer "Yes" to that question. I'm not guessing that these Christians are all demon possessed though. They could just be pissed off that their natural human desires for sex and companionship are thwarted and shamed by their religion. In the second case, as I've stated before and I will again, intercessory prayer doesn't work.

• Jesus told His disciples to preach the gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons. It was ONE command to do the four things. When the gospel is preached, both healing and deliverance need to be ministered. A Christian that cannot live the way He knows God wants him to live needs deliverance from the demons that are compelling him to think and do wrong.

Hang on a second here, if all four of these commands are so viatlly important, why can't I find anywhere on this website where they have examples of raising the dead? Or healing amputees? Oh that's right! Because God is imaginary. (Silly me.)

• Do you suffer from nightmares? Have the popular horror movies you’ve watched had an effect on your personal peace?

Ah yes, let's not forget to blame Hollywood (it's almost as much fun as blaming Canada).

• Have you ever had weird or surreal or scary things happen in your bed or your bedroom while you’re trying to sleep?

No, but now that you've planted that fear-mongering idea in my head I just might.

Emotional traumas open the door for demons to invade. When a child watches a horror movie, he is opening himself up to receive demons of fear . Demons of fear will provoke nightmares. Furthermore, if a person gets involved in the occult, it opens doors for apparitions and for poltergeist demons to act in the household. Poltergeist demons like to move objects around, make noises and make objects appear or disappear.

Again folks, I am not making this up. This is in the FAQs page of the Demon Busters' own website. I heard the phrase "open the door" a lot. Pretty much anything that's fun (music, friends, movies, TV, books, other cultures, ideas, language, and sex, obviously) was the kind of sin that "opened a door" for a demon to attack you. (In other words, having a demon is your own fault - you left him in with that wide open door.) Also, poltergeists?

There's a whole bit about feeling lonely or rejected, visiting a medium, witch, or palmreader; and participating in (or being related to people who participated in) withccraft or voodoo. Basically, they're crazy people who blame demons for all of that. (But I wanna get to the truly insane stuff.)

• Losing your mind?
• Have you spent thousands of dollars in counseling or therapy but not ever really seen any of the behavioral changes or results you desire with your life?
• Do you feel like your life is out of control? Do you feel like you're going crazy sometimes?

Gee, seeing a therapist or psychiatrist might help you deal with those "crazy feelings", but wouldn't a bit of magic hocus-pocus be more dramatic?

Demons attack your mind and speak to your mind. You might think you're hearing voices or thinking unusual thoughts, but it is the demon speaking to you and giving you confusion. You need deliverance of these.

This is dangerous teaching. There's been religious violence perpetrated by the mentally ill more than once just this year. People who hear voices need psychiatric help, not deliverance.

• Do you ever have unreasonable fears or worries that constantly plague you?

Yes, it's called Anxiety Disorder. Fortunately, now that I'm not in a mind-control cult, I have access to medication and information so I can make better dietary and lifestyle choices, to manage my anxiety (exorcism-free). Also, being constantly on the alert for an "open doors" or signs of demonic activity in your life will encourage feelings of paranoia, fear, and anxiety. It's like living in a horror movie, with that constantly tense music playing in the background.

• Are you a woman who just can't conceive a child, no matter what you've tried to do about it?

Ah yes, fertility difficulties as curse from the blessed Jehovah. I was molested as a little girl, and overheard the doctors speculating that I might never have kids. I always felt like a second-class citizen among women because of this. (Well, until I found out I was a 22-year-old *moron* who was 4 months pregnant without realizing it. That sort of changed things for me.) But the suggestion that it is a barren woman's fault she has no children is definitely propagated by the Bible.

• Are you afraid that your infant might suddenly die from “crib death”?

Well, I wasn't until you planted that idea into my head. Notice that the tone of the whole piece (the supposed FAQs) has been one to increase fear, worry, and a sense of uncertainty. It's a big, bad scary world, and the demons are out to get you! (And the aliens, but more on them soon.)

• If you have a child, is he or she out of control and impossible to manage? Is this child making you miserable with his or her behavior problems?

Aw, can't you just feel the love? I think parents are often frustrated, angry, or even feel like they're going crazy when it comes to their kids. But saying that you child is "making you miserable"? And notice how it's not the parent's job to help their child make good decisions, and behave in a way that leads to success in life and society. No, it's the child's behavior making the parent "miserable". This tone of "kids suck" continues throughout, especially in the section "For Teens".

Children inherit demons while in the womb as a result of their ancestors’ sinful activities and need deliverance just like adults (demons may be a cause of birth defects, stillbirths, etc.). They need to have the curses broken and the demons cast out. The behavior problems of children many times are due to demonic activity in their lives.

Wow, so along with their "alive-at-conception" souls they get demons? What kind of god would set up such a crappy system?! And way to blow off all medical, empirical findings about the causes of infant death and birth complications. "Blame the demon" - like pin the tail on the donkey, where the whole poster is the donkey's ass. But now we get to my favorite section, the one I've been waiting to share with you. I must clarify that my family did NOT believe the following. But this group does, and so we should mock them (and we will).

• Have you ever seen a UFO (flyer saucer)? Have you ever seen an alien?
• Have you ever been abducted by a UFO or alien?
• Have you ever found yourself to have inexplicably lost time? Or found yourself waking up where you did not go to sleep?

Aliens! UFOs! There's a two page (looooong) paper on their site about alien abductions, and what they mean in a spiritual way.

Many people are afraid to discuss their UFO experiences with other people because of fear of rejection (people might think they’re crazy or hallucinating).

(I wonder why?)

We believe UFOs are real – they’re not UNIDENTIFIED Flying Objects – they’re IDENTIFIED Flying Objects: DEMONS! If you have had a meeting with an alien, you need deliverance. More than likely, you will need occult curses broken and the demons cast out.

I don't even have anything witty to say. This one just mocks itself all over. Still, I feel a need to "play that out" or something. I mean, that's just weird.



Okay, now that we've gotten UFOs out of our system (sheesh)... After a brief stab at "homosexuality and pornography", we get to the "For Teens" section of the "FAQs". (Somehow, I doubt any of those questions are frequently asked by visitors to the site.) For some inexplicable reason, the teen section doesn't use the bulleted list format of the rest of the page.

Have you ever dabbled in witchcraft, played with a Ouija board or Dungeons & Dragons, or experimented with anything occultic? Did it frighten you? Have you felt different ever since? Have you had nightmares or weird/surreal things happen that you feel like you can't talk to anyone about? Do you wish you hadn't touched the occult?

First off *snort* at "touched the occult". It's like, "Aaaaahh! It touched me!" And, okay - major nerd confession here - I not only played D&D in high school, I was a Dungeon Master. I also played Shadow Run, Legend of the Five Rings, and I've been to a couple LARP Vampire games. I am a geek with a corset. And I can't remember any *actual* occult activity going on. In fact, this video expresses the full extent of it perfectly. (And gives me nostalgic lulz.)


"Where's the Mountain Dew?"

Holy crap that's funny.

If your friends have lured you into getting involved in witchcraft, working spells, playing with the Ouija Board or role-playing with Dungeons and Dragons, and you feel different, then you need deliverance.

"Don't trust your friends!" Sowing the seeds of isolationism, extremism, legalism, and bat-shit-build-bombs-in-the-woods craziness. This next paragraph sets a continually dismal emotional tone. As your reading it, monitor your own feelings to see if there's a change.

Do you feel unloved? Do you feel like people reject you? Did or do your parents reject you? Do you feel unworthy? Do you hate yourself or feel suicidal sometimes? Do these thoughts make you feel sad or depressed? Do you long for a time when you can feel good about yourself and be free of those feelings of rejection?

Almost as cheery as a Cimbalta commercial, huh? (The music in those drives me nuts - I gotta turn the volume off. It's just waaaaay too minor key.) But the solution part's gotta be better, right? Right?

Feeling unloved and unworthy, looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking thoughts like, "You're ugly, you're fat, nobody loves you" -- these are thoughts demons are placing your mind. Believe me, they're not your own thoughts, because God made you perfect. You need to be delivered of demons of rejection, self-rejection, depression, despair, loneliness and suicide.

Wow, even in the "cheer up, Charlie" response the author manages to remind you that you feel unloved and unworthy, that you're ugly and fat and nobody loves you, and that you need to be delivered from demons. Almost every single word is a negative one: unloved, unworthy, ugly, fat, demon, rejection, depression, despair, loneliness. Just reading this can make you feel like crap.

Are you addicted to certain drugs or alcohol? Do you feel that the addiction is taking you down a road you'd rather not go on, or ruining your life? Would you like to kick your habit, but you can't? Would you like a second chance to make a fresh start?

If this is something that runs in the family, then it is a family curse that has to be broken back 10 generations or so, and the demons that came with the curse cast out. If you picked this up by yourself because of peer pressure or out of your own curiosity, a demon came into you that won't let you quit. This demon needs to be cast out.

Demon and deliverance beliefs combine all the free-will of Calvanistic predestiny with victim-blaming of a faith healer or psychic. ("Your skeptical vibes interfered with my aura.")

That's the end of the page. So let's see, what all was it again that's caused by demons? Well...

• cancer
• childhood death
• lack of prosperity
• depression
• emotional instability
• "clumsiness"
• bad luck
• voices in your head
• destructive relationships
• beating your kids uncontrollably (don't worry, you can blame part of it on their demons)
• that back-talking bitch wife yeh got there
• inability to live up to Biblical standards
• friends prayers not working for you
• nightmares
• paranoia
• feelings of insecurity
• addiction
• compulsions
• insanity
• constant fears
• poverty
• infertility
• SIDS
• an unruly child
• UFOs and alien freaking abductions
• homosexuality
• lust
• rejection
• loneliness
• despair
• suicide

Wow, thank goodness half-literate fear-mongering isolationists who believe in freaking UFOs have the solution!

And, gentle readers, so that this post does not leave a bad taste in your mouth, I recommend as your unicorn chaser Jesus Dress Up. The blasphemy is delightful and I'm sure you'll have as much fun as I did, putting together my Star Wars Jesus, Valentine's Day Jesus, and BDSM Jesus. (Seriously, it's good clean unholy fun.)

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I watched Daniel Dennet's presentation at TED recently, and was struck when he mentioned that "Every time you read it or say it, you make another copy in your brain".

This can be very useful when studying. In college I would carry a single small notebook in my purse, and jot down practically every single word one of my professors would say. Once I got home, I'd recopy these notes into separate notebooks for each course. Each weekend, I'd review the notes for each course, and as exams approached, I'd go over them once again. For classes which required a lot of memorization of specific facts or definitions, I'd also make flash cards, and keep these in my back pocket to review while standing in line or between classes or at red lights in traffic. I made repeated copies of the information in my brain, so that I could recall it with ease in the high-pressure setting of an exam. I would know the right answers, because I had drilled myself on them so many times.

I got to thinking about what this meant in terms of religious practice. As a child, prayer was woven into the fabric of everyday life. We prayed over meals, in the mornings before traveling, and at night before going to bed. We went to church every week, at least once a week, and sang the same songs over and over every year. We made copy after copy after copy of these ideas in our brains. Perhaps this is exactly why so many religions emphasize the importance of daily devotions, bible studies, offices of prayer, and weekly church attendance. Each of these activities acts as a form of memorization, embedding the ideas more and more thoroughly into our minds, so that they occur to as the "right" answers, much as the notes I studied before exams.

I quit attending church services regularly after my son was born. For one thing, I was tired all the time. He was sickly as a young child, and I was nursing him, which was difficult when the church wanted me to leave him in the nursery, where he wouldn't be a distraction during the service. I also didn't fit very well in my "Sunday best" anymore with the addition of baby weight, and happened to break my ankle when my son was only a few weeks old. The combination left me at home a lot of Sunday mornings. As time went on and I could reasonably have begun attending services regularly again, I had begun to appreciate the heathen thrill of sleeping in, or lounging around in my pajamas, on a Sunday morning. I didn't quit attending church because I didn't believe in God, but as I failed to go to church, my belief waned. I'm not sure it would have been as easy for me to disbelieve as it was, if I'd been hearing the counter-message "God is true, God is real, God is here, God loves you, God cares inordinately about your sex life" every single weekend.

Many former believers I know talk about still having fears of hell, or dreams about church attendance, long after they leave their faith behind. I think this concept of "making another copy in your brain" may be the root of it. There are some things I learned in college I doubt I'll ever forget, like the principals involved in the "Corrupt Bargain of 1824" (when John Quincy Adams stole the election from Andrew Jackson). In the same way, I don't know that I'll ever forget the words and sign language to "Jesus Loves the Little Children" which I must have sung a thousand times in my early years of life. So when thoughts of God or Christian songs pop into my head, I don't need to give them any more credibility than the memories that they are. I was taught a myth as truth for over 20 years; it seems reasonable to believe, it may take some time before these ideas fade. In the meanwhile, I can study and drill and read and write over and over again the things I know ascertain to be true - the universe is a weird and wonderful place, no more designed for me than for the influenza virus. And I'm going to enjoy every guilt-free moment of the brief life I have in it.

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