Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Atheist Ministers Struggle With Leading the Faithful

Atheist Ministers Struggle With Leading the Faithful
Two Active Ministers Say They No Longer Believe in God but No One Knows

From abcnews.com.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/atheist-ministers-leading-faithful/story?id=12004359

An excerpt:
Jack said that his secret left him feeling isolated but that he would certainly lose a lot of friends when he professed to no longer being a Christian. His wife doesn't know and he said it was possible he could lose her as well.

"It's going to be very confusing for her," Jack said. "It's going to be very devastating and it's going to take us a while to work through it."
One more:
"At first I feared if I lose my faith, I'm gonna become some terrible person," Adam said. "As I lost my faith ... I realized that really had no bearing on who I am and my character and my actions. I live no differently than I did when I was a fervent believer."
What a sad commentary on the harm that religion does to people. The guys are at risk of terrible consequences (familial, social, psychological, financial) for merely.....discovering the truth about the world around them.

Amazing.

3 comments:

  1. I'm not sure what to say about this. To me it is just another example of people going against their surroundings and becoming outcasts for it. This time just happens to involve ministers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You make a good point. Humans do tend to alienate that which is different. We are naturally xenophobic, and have to work to get past that.

    That being said, religions do have, built into them, mechanisms that make such an outcome very likely, and extraordinarily hard to overcome.

    I mean, Southern Baptists will say that these guys are literally being led by the devil! How damaging!

    ReplyDelete
  3. [quote=magx01]I mean, Southern Baptists will say that these guys are literally being led by the devil! How damaging![/quote]

    When I read this it cam across as a euphemism. You are right though.

    ReplyDelete

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