So, the other day on social media a video popped up in my news feed. The person who posted it friend-requested me a few months back, and best as I can tell, this was because he is a lover of "prog-metal"(progressive heavy metal music). To connect the dots for anyone reading along, my old band is thought to have helped pioneer this sound, at least, according to fans and industry people. The correlation is below.
After a little investigating, aka, clicking around on this person's page, I found that the person who posted said video is crippled and in a wheelchair and also appears to be a father of a little girl. This, and the fact that he is a fan of what I do, mainly the former, made me think twice and ultimately decide against posting a response or rebuttal to the video he posted. It made me think twice because his faith could be the only thing getting this guy by in life. And yes, I'm aware that faith could be the only thing getting countless, able-bodied people by in life, as well. As I've said many times on this blog, I do not speak out against religion because I get my jollies or some sort of cheap thrill pulling the carpet out from under people----in this case, it would be a guy in a wheelchair. No. I speak out against religion for largely two reasons, which are, 1) because religion does more harm than good, which, even in this day and age, this clearly still makes the world more dangerous than it needs to be. And 2) because I want believers to know the actual reasons why people become atheists, as opposed to the reasons they are told in church, and/or, as opposed to the reasons they arrive at by projecting their own misinformed views onto me and other atheists.
So, now the video......
Okay, so prior to being "saved", Lacey here, in all of her 16, 17, 18 years on the planet, had been through a lot of hurt.
Now, I'm not trying to minimize anyone's life experiences, but come on now anyone who's ever been a teen and is now over 40. My goodness! And what's this?....she was self-centered and only thought of herself? Say it isn't so! So, in other words, self-centered just like 99.9999% of all other teens in America.
[Edit: I've since learned that Lacey Sturm is currently 35, albeit, I have no idea how old she was at the time this video was made]
Lacey goes on.....
"And when you're an atheist, it kind of....if you don't... if...if life gets too hard, there's really...there's really no reason to keep going.....I don't know." ~ Lacey Sturm
Correct. You don't know. You don't know what you're talking about, other than making assessments about your own life, which wouldn't be so bad if you weren't also attempting to project your solution onto everyone else. You assume that a teenager who has a lot hurt over feeling like an outcast is on par with a teenager who has a lot of hurt over losing both parents in an automobile accident.
In other words, Lacey here has a very myopic view of life. She thinks that everyone's threshold for emotional pain is exactly the same; that everyone's trials in life are exactly the same, and subsequently, that everyone's problems can be made all better with a once size fits all "elixir" called Christianity. But of course, this is what Christianity does - that is, it teaches us that everyone suffers from the same "root" problem and that there is one solution that will work for everyone. This is actually one of the things I now loathe about Christianity.
So, do you know how I know that this just doesn't work? Here's how: Because for starters, suicidal thoughts are not exclusive to "atheists". That's the biggest clue of all. I can count six people I've known who were devout, church-going, bible-believing Christians who, for one reason or another, decide to end their own lives.
On a much larger scale, I think it then becomes very safe to say that on any given day in church someone is thinking of (or has recently thought of) committing suicide. Given this, we can see that what Lacey thought of as a direct, unique message from God wasn't so unique after all. In fact, it amounts to confirmation bias: Lacy subjectively validated in her own mind that her problems were "unique" to her and that God had chosen to intervene. It was His Plan.
If that's true, then when Christians have suicidal thoughts and no one picks up on those thoughts, say, in church, we are then being reasonable to conclude that when plans to hang themselves or blow their brains out are carried out, this must be "God's Plan", too.
Christian's suffering from depression and killing themselves at roughly the same statistical rate as non-Christians, including atheists? It's almost as if there isn't any "Plan" at all.
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Addendum:
I almost forgot, and this is important: When theists argue that atheism leads to depression and that there's "no reason to keep going", etc., this is a logical fallacy known as a non sequitur. A non sequitur is defined as a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
For example, if someone said, "I do not make much money and this makes me unhappy. People who are rich are happy," most of us would instantly spot the flaw in that reasoning. By the same token, when a theist argues that atheism leads to depression and suicide, the implication is that theism is true, and therefore it's the logical alternative to atheism.
If you can spot the flaw in first example's line of reasoning, you should be able to spot the flaw in the second example's line of reasoning. Even if the first premise was true..i.e..that atheism leads to depression and thoughts of suicide, etc., that does not automatically make the implied conclusion true, which is that "God" is real, and therefore the answer to atheism.
Even if every atheist offed themselves, that doesn't make theism true.
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