Leaving a cult (and its side effects) behind

If there's one thing I learned from being in the Jehovah Witnesses for 19 years, it's that what people like to refer to as the truth, is very often just misguided hope. The actual truth, considering how little we can actually know about it, usually turns out to be slightly less convenient. Hear my story?

As early in life as I can remember, I had to attend boring religious meetings, three times a week. About one-hundred persons in a "kingdom hall" would proceed to read a few pages from a book or article written and printed by the organization. Someone would read out loud, others would take care of carrying a set of microphones along the rows of seats. People would raise their hand to get a chance to share their "personal" answer to one of several questions they were supposed to have prepared for in advance; pretty one-sided questions. This could last up to two hours (including some depressingly repetitive monologues). At the end, we had to stay for a while still, to fraternize. Little could I know that what I was witnessing was not Jehovah, but the mind-control tactics of a religious cult. It's not as if back then I had any choice; but it taught me quite a bit about patience...

I was made to memorize prefabricated answers to provide when teachers or other children would question why I wasn’t celebrating holidays or why I didn’t want them to sing me Happy Birthday. I was told that the end was near and that every single person on Earth was about to die, except us and those whom we could manage to save. Around the age of 6 or 7, I was warned against making friends with pretty much anyone around me. The reasoning was that if I became emotionally close with non-Jehovah Witnesses, I would be very sad watching them die on the day of Armageddon; and Armageddon was coming soon. It’s still coming soon. I’m not afraid about God murdering my neighborhood anymore, but it taught me about what careless wording can do to the mind of a child.

Being a teenager wasn’t easy either. Before I even knew what an erection is, I was warned against the dangers of homosexuality, masturbation, pornography and adultery; therefore, most of my sex ed came from porn. Years before I could even grasp the concept of flirting, I was warned that flirting is a very bad and dangerous thing to do. Useless to say, I was never to have a girlfriend; never to hang out with chicas without adult supervision. One day, I could get married with one single, virgin female, and that wasn’t anywhere close to happening, therefore, I did what humans do best: I adapted; and felt guilty for it. So here I am, almost 30 years old, in a 10 year old relationship. Never learned much about flirting but I have learned how simple honesty beats skillful manipulation.

Instead of going out and learning many social skills I could now benefit from as an adult, I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours going door to door, every Saturday morning (and other days of the week too). At each single door, I would grab all my courage and knock. If given a chance to talk, I would repeat what I was indoctrinated into believing. Thanks to this, I have probably faced more rejections during my teenage than people should face in a normal lifetime. With a few exceptions, it was systematic door-after-door rejection. I missed out on all of the peaceful awakenings, and morning cartoons, but I did come to learn that courage and social phobia aren't mutually exclusive.

It was near the end of my teenage that I finally started to rebel. Seeing how I was questioning her faith and refusing to attend church, my mother became frightened, even terrified that I might not be granted eternal life after all. The abominable idea that she could spend the rest of eternity living "happily" in a terrestrial paradise, having failed to save me from her loving God's wrath; that she just couldn't handle. Looking back, I now suspect that my mom was probably already suffering from emotional trauma. Having been abused herself, she must have been a perfect target for cults at the time. I realize that religion cannot be blamed for all our psychological issues; however, it probably acted as a catalyst and worse, it also prevented her from seeking some professional help.

In most religious cults and even larger religions, public image is unfortunately much more important than anyone's health. Think about the Catholic Church and how they handle cases of children abuse. Even today, I'm forced to admit that although I was able to escape by developing some basic critical thinking skills, the mind programming was still partially successful. I’m not always happy but somehow, I stay under the impression that I should always look as if I am. In social situations involving more than two people, I am often so worried about external judgment that I just shy away from opportunities to make new friends. Social anxiety/phobia appears to be a common issue among people who have escaped from mind-control based religions. 

Overtime, I have come to be a person who loves irony, but it does sometimes make me mad that even though I've completely changed my mind, and try my best to view things rationally, I still sometimes find myself acting exactly the way I was conditioned to, as a child. Developing (let alone maintaining) critical thinking just isn't as easy as I wish it were. I can very well see how people would allow others to tell them how to act or think; mind-control schemes can seem attractive when considering the arduousness of having to account for our own decisions.

Angering the religion of peace

September 12, 2001, Montreal, Canada

About 500 kilometers down south, something big has just happened. People are praying, hoping that what they're witnessing is just a terrible nightmare. Mildly unaware, I'm at the grocery store, buying milk. As I look at them uncomfortably, I can feel a hopeless mix of shame and anxiousness as their eyes turn away nervously. And suddenly it hits me. How is it even statistically possible that every Arab I've ever met, is a Muslim? Doesn't look like a choice to me...

Ten years have passed; since then, I've had a chance to meet people from many parts of the world, including Muslims. After all, this is Montreal. Considering my experience as a person with a genuine atheistic interest in trying to make sense of religious subjects, I think it's only fair for me to express what I think about the mega-religion known as Islam. Although I'm not aiming to be uselessly provocative, I'm going to be terribly honest and say that it seems dangerously troubling how a large number of Muslims I've spoken to seemed unable to acknowledge some very important modern facts; it's as if something seems to be keeping them from it. Yet, in order for things not to go terribly wrong, it is necessary for everyone to be able to criticize a broadly accepted ideology, openly and without fear of retaliation. It appears to me very problematic that most public criticism coming from outside of Islam is hardly analyzed but instead dismissed, even by the non-Islamic world, as if it were nothing more than primitive xenophobia.

Yet another honor killing on the horizon?

But in reality, even inside their own culture, courageous critics are most often met with extreme violence (including death threats), repression or denial. Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali come to mind, both threatened with death, not for having commited violent actions but for their ideas, books, or even fleeing an arranged marriage in the case of the latter. It really doesn't seem to matter to most Muslims whether such critics originated from sheer ignorance or well-researched and carefully constructed arguments. Besides, even when the immediate response turns out to be a moderate one, chances are that the proposition will never be dealt with in a manner that's even remotely constructive. This is a problem not only for us but for Muslims too, I'm pretty sure. It's becoming increasingly foolish to deny this; we hear about it all the time. Every once in a while, you can read depressing news stories about little girls stabbed to death by their dad because they were abandoning the faith; even worse, they were commiting the preposterous sin of becoming too "westernized". Talking of xenophobia...

This kind of violence is almost unique to Islam; no matter how much we try to ignore it, it keeps happening and happening. Strangely, when I read articles about this, I can rest assured not to find much being mentionned about the religious nature of the crime. Let's be serious here, the father isn't denying the murder nor his religious motive; he's the one who called the police to brag about it, only to be sentenced to life-time prison with a smile. He knows it was God's will, he knows deep within his heart that he did the right thing; his miserable earthly life doesn't matter because he'll be rewarded in heaven when he finally gets his own chance to die. Quite suspicious for a religion claiming to be fundamentally peaceful, indeed. Whenever asked why the Islam-only censorship, the reply from mainstream media is something along these lines: we don't want to offend our moderate Muslim friends by rubbing salt into the wound. Let's face it, in the "religion of peace" when it comes to freedom of speech, a disturbingly large minority of people indeed seems to be moderate about the "peace" part. Really, what is there to be "moderate" about if the fundamentals of something are supposedly about peacefulness? Too many questions we dare not ask.

Why of course - cartoonists too can be a threat to world peace

When it comes to freedom of expression, Islam is by far the most difficult religion to deal with. Even where I live in Canada, all it takes is one sentence to realize that whenever the subject of religion comes up, Islam remains the only big religion that you cannot talk about without making everyone really uncomfortable. Whatever the problem is and whatever the sources of this problem are, there is a problem. It causes discomfort and is not just an irrational fear caused by media. It always seems so vague and difficult to pinpoint but does seem to have a lot to do with the idea that criticizing Islam is mistaken for racism even by Muslims who should know that Islam is not their race but their religion. If even they manage to confuse race/culture/religion as being some kind of indissoluble melting pot, then imagine how difficult it can be for other people. So we get to a point where we feel as if what Muslims really want for us is nothing more than to be afraid of offending their "sacred" ideas. And that didn't happen just by watching some idiotic and misleading Fox News program. It is their reaction that people tend to be afraid of and deep in our subconscious, we all know why. The cowardly way by which we handle this particular issue is ridiculous to such an extent that thinking about it leaves most people speechless and terrified.

Dear moderate Muslim: It is only ironic that part of any Muslim faith has to do with hoping for the end of the world, for a final godly judgment during which everyone who rejects your faith is supposed to perish in a big war that possibly even involves human weapons; about the necessity of spreading Islam throughout the world to accomplish some holy prophecy; and despite these clear facts, whenever we talk about your religion to you, all we get is this apparent state of denial about what Islam really is about: a wish for things to end, a wish for us "infidels" to either convert or die, by whatever mean your invisible God deems appropriate when the time comes for me to pay for my lack of belief. People like myself know perfectly well that Islam is not centered around just flying planes in buildings and that the majority of you are peaceful beings, but we also know that literal interpretation of ancient Islamic text can easily lead (and have lead) to such acts. We know that much of the Qur'an is not peaceful at all; we just don't buy your ridiculous "lost in translation" plead to misinterpretation, by the way.

Afghanistan: Female USA soldiers encouraged to "blend in"

We all know for a fact that Islamic laws only give half the value to a woman's testimony in Shariah court; apparently they're too stupid to have more than half a grasp on reality. We know, just as well as you probably see when you compare your culture to Western cultures, that your religion is sexist and that just like all the other religions and cultures out there including mine, there's a lot of space for improvement. The rest of the educated world also thinks that you really should get over with the fact that we're just a very lucky mammalian species, and stop rejecting the theory of evolution. It may be "just a theory" as you like to say; it's been proven out of any reasonable doubt to be true by thousands and thousands of experiments. We know that you are not stupid; your ancestors contributed a huge share of the science we have today, while the Christians were stuck in a dark age of violent religious nonsense themselves. But today, you're just looking like fools for rejecting serious scientific knowledge. All that's needed to understand the basic framework of evolution through natural selection is curiosity, as well as humility. It requires not a shred of faith.

If you've read this far, without shutting your mind off at the mere sight of honest, albeit mildly-aggressive common sense, you're pretty good. You're probably starting to understand that what people like me think of your religion is not necessarily as ignorant as the paradoxical notion of "islamophobia" would like to have you believe. A lamentable attempt to portray any kind of outside criticism as some sort of racism against (I hope you see what's wrong here...) your religion, designed so that you can be shielded from external ideas, instead drawing comfort in thinking that you're being persecuted. You're not being persecuted; you're being offered a chance to start a bullshit-free kind of dialogue with a secular world in which religion is slowly disappearing. If you're not yet cursing but still thinking straight after all this hurtful reading, then please realize that you are part of a very small and slowly growing minority. The entire world is crossing fingers, hoping that your religion will not take as much time as Christianity did to evolve into a more peaceful one.

Theo Van Gogh: Murdered for making a 10-minute movie critical of Islam

During the Christian inquisition, nuclear weapons didn't exist. We do not have the luxury to wait centuries; we need you to hurry before it gets too late. Anything you can do to help Islam get past its own dark age is not only welcome, it can help ensure the short-term survival of our species. When we look at the millions of moderate Muslims, we don't want to see you just praying and waiting for peace, no; we wish to see a massive as well as outspoken rejection of extremism. We are not feeling it yet, whatever it is that you pretend. If you were part of a political party acting like this, you would have either kicked all the crazy people out, or have left it in disgust a long time ago. Your inaction is interpreted by the entire world as silent acceptance. When Bush wanted to attack Iraq, you could see the massive demonstrations all around the western world, voicing their disgust at all the obvious lies; we didn't see a lot of public outrage from you after 9/11. Considering there are over a billion of you, I don't think we would have missed it. Were you all too busy praying about it? Now that I think of it, tons of Palestinians were indeed out there, dancing in the streets. Not sure if that counts.

Your people have inspired the world in a beautiful way, last spring. Your refusal to submit to injustice and your will to express yourself in spite of the threat of violent repression, all of this leaves a lot for everyone to learn from. But when it comes to that which you deem holy, your general understanding of free speech still leaves much room for improvement. Let's be serious for once. If Allah needs to defend Islam against cartoonists who broke his religious laws, and if he's so powerful, then why don't you let him? Why is it that nobody ever gets death threats from their parents for leaving Christianity nowadays? Although they're not the only problem obviously, to tell the truth, divisive and conquering religions such as Islam, Christianity and Judeism have never been of much help to world peace. We don't care about your imaginary end of the world but it does worry us that it might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy if the Iranian people do not wake up and overthrow their sick religious leaders. Let's stop shifting the blame. It won't do either of us any good when crazy religious fanatics get ahold of nukes and start believing that God wants them to press the button. These people are not just religious, they're mentaly ill, and they're in power for all the wrong reasons; religious reasons.

Although I cannot possibly speak for everyone here, I'm very confident that most if not all of us atheists, just want this present world to regain some of its sanity. Denying the existence of inherent problems within Islam to outsiders and possibly even to yourself is counterproductive in every imaginable way. When I see interviews like the ones in Bill Maher's movie Religulous, I find it very difficult to tell if you really are in denial... or if you know that something isn't right, but are choosing to lie because you cannot think of an alternate behavior. Do you seriously think that your religion has all the answers? Can't you see that it doesn't? If we talk about this to you and inevitably get that kind of evasive reply, how are we supposed to deal with it when it clearly seems to us that your political agenda is not peaceful at all towards those of us who refuse to believe? How can we really respect you when we can't know whether you're attempting to be genuine or just being deceitful in order to foster your religious leaders' clear interest for world domination?

How friendly could religion ever get towards science?

Have you ever read the story of Jesus' resurrection? Perhaps you might want to read it again, this time from a fresh and “science-friendly” point of view:

You see, there's this very interesting part, shortly after Jesus rises from the dead, where he briefly appears in a room in which his disciples are gathered. One of them, named Thomas, has been insisting on remaining skeptical about the issue of resurrection. He doesn't want to believe yet; at least, not until he's witnessed some evidence. After all, might he be thinking, perhaps it is just hype; perhaps the others have been honestly mistaken. He certainly wouldn't want to spread false information and since his friends have no evidence, no pictures and no recordings, he decides that before he's going to believe any of it, he needs to see it with his own eyes.  Fair enough?

Well, it doesn’t seem so. Not satisfied about having been able to convince Thomas, Jesus now deems essential to tease him by making a little speech about it. This great philosopher of his time goes out of his way to put a strong emphasis on how foolish it was from Thomas to insist for evidence. Because it's obviously foolish to dare questioning the resurrection of someone whom you’ve witnessed dying a slow death on a cross, tortured and punctured. From this moment in biblical “history” it becomes clear why science (as we know it today) will not be rediscovered for a long time after Jesus. And we’re also getting a pretty good feel of the many hardships our very first scientists will have to overcome before they even start being taken seriously. People tend to believe that trust is better than inquiry. Since biblical times, we’ve made quite a lot of progress. Whoever you are today, for example, you most certainly know that epilepsy isn’t caused by demonic possession. You also know that bats are mammals, just like us; not birds, as divinely revealed in Leviticus. But doesn’t this leave you wondering how far the scientific enterprise would be today if we had had more people like Thomas and fewer like Jesus?

I was read this story by my parents, back when I was pretty young. They were sincerely convinced that the entire story of the bible literally happened. Up until today, they still believe that Noah's ark really existed. Unlike you and me, they never really stopped to wonder how it is that the kangaroos and polar bears managed to even get on the ark. They’ve never really thought about how Noah and his family were able to find anything to drink after getting out of the ark, considering that all oceans had been mixed with any available source of drinking water for forty days and forty nights. Neither did they stop to wonder just how ridiculously huge the ark would have needed to be in order to store all the food needed for each species to survive or the excrement produced by the entire ecosystem they were supposedly carrying along. The bible says you shouldn’t question the bible, simple as that. And yet, even as a child, I could already feel the cognitive dissonance going around in my head as a result from hearing such nonsense. Today, I find it quite interesting how the narrative so strongly and shamelessly suggests that a person who honestly wants evidence should be publicly ridiculed by someone who’s supposed to be an ultimate moral guide as well as wise, loving and perfect.

Anyone who understands the very basics of scientific inquiry would probably find that Thomas at least had somewhat of a scientific mind, otherwise he wouldn't have been inclined to skeptical thinking. But few of us really stop to think about what science is and why it's so important. We leave it to the elite, pretending that it's extremely complicated. We easily forget the simplicity of what actually makes science work. Science can even be applied to thinking, in the form of  rules of logic and evidence, eliminating bias by trying to prove oneself wrong rather than right. This ability to think freely is exactly what, unlike religious people, allows us atheists to say: Perhaps there is no God; perhaps we’ve been wrong all along. It has given us the means to think without faith-based restraints and even an incentive to do so. Science says: "If there really is truth to it, then we shouldn't fear trying to disprove it. Let's test if prayer actually works, for example; let’s do it in a scientific environment." Science doesn't require us to reject certain views on the basis that they contradict previous notions. If the truth happens to be very inconvenient, we want to know anyway, because it’s the truth we’re interested in.

Thomas should have trusted his comrades without questioning or so does the narrative naively wants you to believe. Although his character's role clearly shows mild signs of scientific awakening, he isn't a very important character in the biblical story; it's quite obvious why. We'll probably never know if he even existed, but one thing we do know is that people usually do not rise from the dead. Of course, anyone could argue that it did happen, but on what basis other than faith? Come to think of it, we wouldn’t believe it either if a bunch of excited people came telling us that they saw John Lennon walking in the street. Scientific improbability as well as a lack of evidence leads us to believe that none of the Gospel's many resurrections ever happened. Most of of the strangest parts of the bible are obviously very likely to have been made up, or at least exaggerated by people who didn't quite realize just how ridiculous their claims would sound to us, thousands of years later. The one about Jesus and Thomas, from the perspective of science, stands today as an awfully bad moral lesson. It was clearly intended to mock and discourage skeptical inquiry while at the same time praising blind faith in claims of divine revelation.