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***trigger warnings : cult, abuse***
I have discussed in previous posts about my CPTSD - i'll let you read them and wait for you to come back to this one - although I'll repeat some of it, I'll try to focus on adding details.
Ok, so, you read that my crazy father created a cult (although he doesn't recognize it as such), making a very complicated salad of all religions and adding his own ingredients.
He believes he is humanity's ultimate savior, the last messiah and an incarnation of god himself, as well as all the known prophets which god sent to earth before him.
He was a miracle child, born to his parents very late in their lives. He was a surprise, a bad one, really.
He grew up spoiled, cherished above his siblings, due to this unexpected birth so late in his parents lives.
Somehow, somewhere, during the hippie period, my father started hearing voices: god revealed himself, itself, herself, to him : he was a special kind of guy. He was them.
Yes, he came up with the not so innovative idea that god isn't a guy, or a woman, but both together and they have created everything and gave him the mission of propagating their name, and to save people's souls to go to heaven on jugement day.
He had calculated the date of the end of times, for the 1980's. It didn't come. God hadn't chosen the worthy humans who believe in god and his ultimate messiah (my daddy, THAT hero...)
So, my dad went back and calculated... every year or so, he'd come up with the next possible date, next year. In spite of his omniscience and direct speed dial to god (himself in another plane of existence), he had miscalculated... it's not now, it's for later.
After several erroneous calculations, he decided to push it far into the future.
In the meantime, he has the mission to save everyone, especially his own offspring, the fruits of his religious loins and chanting, the fruit of his devotion to himself...
Oh yea, that totally makes sense! right ? why not?! If he says so, it must be so.
My entire childhood and teen years have been marked by his strict religious mind-wiping techniques.
He de-personalized me. I was nothing. Not even a speck of dust. Not even the tiniest grain of sand. Nothing.
He pushed and shoved his ideas and opinions into my psyche. He sent me to school because it was mandatory, but forbade any contact with my fellow classmates. I had to be molded into his best disciple, so I could one day become his best preacher.
One day came and he asked me to start telling my classmates about him. Try to bring them to my light, he said. Try to save their souls in my name, in the name of god. I am god, so you can do it. You are my eldest son, you are my voice.
if the classmates became interested, great! join the club, the elite of humankind that will get saved and sent to heaven. If not, scorn them for being disbelievers and sinners.
Simple as that. Preach. Bring me disciples, or cut ties with them.
After the only one kid I had approached, and whose father seemed to be interested in following that messiah, I realized that if I continued, more people would suffer like I did.
I decided to stop. I decided that I shouldn't participate in ruining lives.
I just reported that the kids didn't listen and that I'd cut ties as ordered. This was a lie.
Over the years, I found it tremendously hard to question my father and his teachings. I had doubts, what if he's right ? what if I don't do as he says and I'll end up burning in hell forever and ever with no possible recourse or appeal in god's supreme court? what if I am condemning my soul to utter destitution from god?
It took many acts my dad had, which contradicted his own teachings.
He had threatened to kill me with his bare hands if I'd ever talk to girls (I mentioned that already).
He was very violent with my step-mother (before and after I knew that she wasn't my actual birth-mother). He beat her, her threw dishes at her, he punched her, her screamed at her - sometimes for no apparent reason, or a tiny itsy bitsy nothing.
He punished me on many occasions: I ended up spending a good portion of my life in the small WC, as well as deprived of meals.
He beat the hell out of me, too : with his belt, or with his bare hands. He beat the hell out of me whenever he decided that I had disobeyed his religious teachings.
My doubts transformed into certainties : he is a fake. He says he brings universal love, peace and saving souls. But he is, instead, a very violent and unfair man.
I grew up to see that he wasn't god, but absolute evil. His extreme violence did not compute with universal love.
I started seeing him less and less than a god, but a horrible human being.
From his multiple abuses, I have psychological scars that have been hurting me for about 88% of my life. That's not a joke or a bad calculation on my part. It's facts. It's how long I have had depression, social anxieties, a dozen phobias, and PTSD : Post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have flashbacks, just typing this, in spite of 2 decades of therapy. In spite of a big geographic distance I have with my oppressor and abuser. In spite of the fact that I know that he cannot hurt me ever again and that I'd defend myself if he ever showed up and tried anything against me.
In spite of the fact that I am now an adult and not a child.
The pain is there. The hurtful words and acts which put me down so much. The threats, the abuse, the emotional havoc he created. They are all there. They are part of me, of who I am.
And yet, I decided that I am a survivor : I'm alive, in spite of many odds against it. I was almost not born, to be frank...
I grew to question not only him, but all religions and have divorced them all. I'v had my fill - bucket's loads even. These loads could last me many lifetimes, but I have only one as being who I am in this particular incarnation of there is such a thing is reincarnation.
I see that there is so much evil propagated. making people feel they are guilty unless they give their lives up to some deities which humans invented and wrote about in so-called holy books...
I see that there is a misconception that being an atheist tantamount to immorality. That it's impossible to be a decent, good and moral person without divine guidance...
However, there is evidence to the contrary. So, without any apologies, I'll say it now : part of my CPTSD regards religion. I have had my fill. I am an atheist, maybe a bit of a pantheist, but I certainly don't believe in any supreme being who created the word and the people on this planet... and not 6000 years ago..
No dude with a beard who needs adoration and prayers to validate ''him''.
No dude that creates imperfect humans who can be absolute sadist in the image of the god who punishes everyone who doesn't believe in him or sins...
The sacred people were people, philosophers, or maybe just figments of imagination, or somewhere in between... some are surely composites of real people and some ideologies.
This is part of my CPTSD, as in : Complex Post-traumatic stress disorder.
However, even if I cure my CPTSD, I won't ever go back to religion to comfort me, because my choice is guided by reason and intellect, not just an emotional response to my trauma - even if it may appear like it.
I have researched, gathered information and historic data. I thought and analyzed, before coming to my conclusions and decided to shift from believing one thing, to believing another.
I do think I made the right choice, at least for me, and I wish that everyone can understand that I'm questioning the validity of religious doctrines and misinformation (because there is, that's a fact that no one can deny once looking it up), but :
If someone, anyone, you, want to believe ; do, it's your right. As much as it is mine to decide otherwise and be an atheist pantheist who's also a trekkie, maybe a bit of Minbari, maybe something else too...
I won't tolerate anyone who wants to push me back into the arms of the church, or into any other religion, mono or multi deities, it doesn't matter.
I won't tolerate those cults who want to save my soul - let it be where it is, if it is at all.
I can understand and appreciate that if you believe that my soul is danger and you want to save it, that's your religious duty - just keep it to yourself, pray if you must. Leave me out of it.
But, let me assure you, if you don't shove your religion on me, I won't shove on you my atheism. I may discuss and share opinions, because the subject as an intellectual pursuit.
I don't necessarily always agree with all the atheists, either. I think that just like some religious people can be good or bad, moral or immoral, the same goes for atheists, it's the people who determine that, not the sticker ''atheist/ religious''.
We may have to agree to disagree.
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