Chapter 1

MY EARLY RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL YEARS

I grew up hating everything that had to do with religion. My parents forced me to attend their Jehovah’s Witness religious gatherings several times a week. Even our very few vacations away from home were spent at boring, fanatic religious gatherings. The only people they would have as friends were from their church and, even worse, the only friends I was allowed to have had to be from the same fanatic religion.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have it all quite figured out when it comes to not losing members from their flock. I was taught that everything was bad and a sin — things like movies, reading the newspaper, dancing, playing any sport with non-members, going to the beach alone, going on a date without a chaperone, smoking anything (be it a pipe or a cigar), drinking alcoholic beverages, talking to the neighbors, using drugs of any kind, sex other than within marriage and in the missionary position, masturbating, even reading magazines. All this, and much more, was evil, and in many instances grounds for temporary or permanent dismissal from the congregation (the church).

What is worse, once dismissed you were forbidden to ever talk to any of their members again, except for very close relatives such as parents — and even that, though not required, is very commonly extended to include them. I was taught that a supreme being called Jehovah had his eyes on us all the time and would punish us, and that all non-members were going to be destroyed at Armageddon and shut out of his kingdom.

Worse still, this Armageddon was supposedly just around the corner, only a few short years away, so any education other than theirs was a waste of time. Studying medicine or law, for example, was said to be of no use in this new kingdom in heaven; therefore, going to college was heavily discouraged. They never presented real-world facts, such as how many other competing religions there are, nor did they ever compare facts other than the ones they could easily control. They had — and still have — two magazines for those of the more curious, inquisitive minds; both are meant to make you believe they contain all the scientific and world information one should ever need, and they are frequent enough to keep the flock busy, with little time left for thinking about or researching anything else. What little time members do have left, they spend spying on one another.

This was my hell on earth, from the day I was born until the day I gathered enough courage to leave this fanatic religion once and for all. Believe me, it was quite difficult: for starters, I was falling in love with a girl I really liked — she and her family cared for me quite a bit — and I had only one friend outside the church. Studying to be a scientist was heavily discouraged. I was taught that the end of the world was soon to come, that God would provide everything to everyone who abided by his rules, and that there would be no more disease — therefore no doctors, and no need to study medicine, which had been my first choice. Since God was to provide everything, there was no real need for me to study any further than the basics of school.

All of this made me hate everything to do with religion more with each day I was forced to be there. Their way of teaching was extremely seductive and based only on fear.

My mother would use any means she could to coerce me into participating, even faking all sorts of illnesses, such as heart problems. From the very early age of five, I was deceived into believing she had a heart condition. She is now close to eighty years old, with no heart problem whatsoever; it was all a lie to control me. I was taught that all other religions were useless and quite wrong in all their teachings, which led me to dismiss them — and in fact I found this to be largely true, as most religions, if not all, are based on fear and on taking money from their members in more than one way. As you can imagine, all this led me to concentrate on science and to ignore anything having to do with spiritual beliefs, religion, and the like. I even changed the radio station whenever the daily horoscope came on, and quickly turned the page of the newspaper if I saw the horoscope.

If anyone approached me with their religious propaganda, I would quickly throw it away, and I got quite mad and frustrated at how naive and stupid people could be.

We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc.Julian Huxley, Religion Without Revelation

Doubt everything. Find your own light.Last words of Gautama Buddha, in the Theravada tradition

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.Richard Dawkins

I condemn false prophets; I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will — and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.Gene Roddenberry