Donna, has asked:
Sean, I think, early on when I 1st looked around here, you said something about “gave up God in ’07″. Other than no obvious proof to you, what set you on that belief track?
Good question Donna, and one that is complex in the sense that I think it is hard to pin it down to one source.
I can trace my departure from religion and then God from age 15. I read two books:
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the Messianic Legacy, they are precursors and source material for Dan Brown’s Davinci Code. They are historical potboilers but probably not worth reading. What they did was break my Catholic conditioning or a least began that process. They presented historical facts and biblical facts that had not been brought to my attention in my religious education, they started me questioning.
My transfer from a Catholic High School to a State School in my senior years contributed in the sense that I recieved dogmatic reinforcement only when going to Church on Sundays or when going on Youth Group Retreats. I stopped going to church regularly when I hit eighteen. That and I lost two friends to the Potters House Cult and that turned me off the Happy Clappy mob.
I left home at Nineteen and went to University and my philosophical leanings turned towards Buddhism, and at this stage probably would have considered myself an agnositic deist. To tell you the truth though, at this time Study and work were my priorities and I didn’t spend that much time on religious introspection.
Fast forward to 2006 and I am pushing myself to broaden my horizons, I start investigating Buddhism as a basic philosophy without the religious garb. Late 2006 I have an encounter with a street preacher which leads to me investigating his claims, and again forcing me to look at the god question again. Then while traveling came across the God Delusion bought it and began investigating the claims of theists/atheists.
In 2007 I shook of the last shackles and nothing much else changed, although I became more vocal as an atheist – I guess you could say my consciousness was raised.
So there was no tragedy just coincidences, study and thought that brought me to where I am today
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What is/was “Potters House” cult?
Is is a “prominent” cult in Oz??
I like some of the aspects of Buddhism, so does one of my Catholic family members. She’s a
“died in the wool” Catholic and has
a Masters in Chemistry (insert Tiny
Mind here!!), but even she says she
thinks it doesn’t matter what you call the “deity”, as long as you believe. Which, as YOU know, I am
NOT pushing off on you!!
I had a friend in college whose mom was Buddhist and dad was Catholic. Somebody asked him one day which way he practiced. He said that he preferred Buddhism because if you screw up you at least get a chance to come back and do it right again later. My question to him was, “yeah, but what if you come back as a dung beetle?” We always get a chuckle out of this.
I would like to know more about Potters House you mentioned.
WM-
Am waiting to see if Sean tells us
what “Potters House” is/was.
While “waiting”, do you think you &/or I am “OK”, in God’s mind, that we “pick & choose” from all kinds of theology the parts we like?
I liked what you said about some humans just being mean and wanting
to control. I HATE animal abusers.
And “instigators” of genocide. Why? All in the name of “power”???
I guess I really have very little or NO ambition in life, I really do NOT want to be in “power” over
anyone, I don’t get it. . .
While you wait, it is probably this Potters House church…
http://www.pottershouse.com/
toni-
Thank you!! I’ll go look @ that.
Never heard of it, some am interested to look into it!!
WM-
I looked @ the site, link provided by Poodles. Looks somewhat like
any “normal” “Christian” body/group, but I’m “suspicious”
after the “tip off” from Sean.
Looks like there is one bunch of em
right near where he lives, too- maybe that’s how HE knows about ‘em.
Hmm. . .
@Donna’s first post.
Buddhism does not have a deity, some variations of it have concepts of other entities but at its core it is more a philosophy. Which I think is why it is so adaptable, you can be both deistic buddhist and an atheistic buddhist in my view.
The Potter’s House in an evangelical christian group.
Re Potter’s House,
It depends on what your definition of normal Christianity is I suppose. I attended an Assemblies of God church and found that to be toooo evengelical for me. The Potter’s House was hard core, targetted young adults one of the friends I lost burned his entire Beatles collection at the direction of the Pastor.
The Pastor is generally king of his congregation – too much power in one MAN and no oversight.
Info on the cult:
http://caic.org.au/zpotters.htm
Donna,
I really think that our atheist friends have it right when they “connect the dots” among different religions. Historically you can connect different theologies together through the ideas. There is very little that is original to modern religions. It can all be traced back to some other time and place.
I have never understood the whole power thing. Animals, little kids, women. Every power tripper eventually corners someone or something tougher than they are!
So, yeah I think we are “ok” in God’s eyes.
I’m not sure how a church can call itself evangelical and have it’s membership drop friends that are non-believers.
WM-
Pls go to comments under Sean’s posting for 1/21- I posted to you there by accident- #36, I think-
Donna-
funny story about nuns. My oldest monster goes to a public school that currently rents space from a group of nuns. They don’t even wear habits and she is terrified of them. What do you think that says?
I would guess the nuns demeanor is not very conducive to getting along with today’s younger generation? (The only other option that comes to mind is kids
often form their opinions from what they hear @ home, and it hasn’t seemed like she would hear
from around home!)
Sean-
When you say you lost 2 friends to the fruitcake Potter House cult, do you mean they joined it and things became “strained” or they joined it and died “mysteriously”?
Donna,
My friends joined it, things became strained and then one of them tried to use our friendship to manipulate me into going. You know things like trying to get me to promise to attend an event and acting hurt if I didn’t go.
Sean,
Well, here I’m going out on the old
limb, again- that’s the old fundamentalist @ their “best”. If you don’t go along with what THEY want, you’re less holy, less “good”, less everything than they are.
Oprah has a saying (and I don’t agree “blindly” with EVERYTHING she
says, either), but she said once if
you tell someone “No.”, that means
NO. If they continue to ask/nag/
force you to do “whatever”, then they are trying to CONTROL you, and
the more I think about it, I think she’s correct. Using a friendship to force someone to do something that they have very clearly let you know you’re not interested in is just “stupid”. Why not just drop
that aspect and keep the friendship? (“them” drop nagging YOU about it!)
Then Maya Angelou told Oprah once that the 1st time somebody shows you what they REALLY are, BELIEVE
THEM.
When I was attending AOG (Assemblies of God), we were encouraged not to have non-christian friends and to stop associating with those we couldn’t convert.
But churches of all descriptions are insular and separatist to a degree. Each could not maintain separate cannons, traditions, dogmas, etc otherwise.
Donna: If they continue to ask/nag/
force you to do “whatever”, then they are trying to CONTROL you
Well, if we take a little look at religion in general… You must pray, you must observe the sabboth, you must observe christmas and easter, you must attend church, you must tithe, you must listen to the priest, you MUST believe, etc, or you cannot be a part of that religion.
So it seems to me that the one thing any church or religion seeks to do, right from the very start, is to try to control both your thoughts and your actions.
Now if it’s bad for a single person to try to control or manipulate me, how much worse is it when the method of control and manipulation is formalised, organised and institutionalised?