Hope after Faith Quotes

“Skepticism is my nature. Free Thought is my methodology. Agnosticism is my conclusion. Atheism is my opinion. Humanitarianism is my motivation.”
― Jerry DeWitt, Hope after Faith: An Ex-Pastor's Journey from Belief to Atheism

“I didn’t confront the Dominionists directly, instead choosing to minister to the sick and hungry New Orleanians who arrived in DeQuincy in Katrina’s wake. But inside, I fumed at the Dominionist faction at Grace. Katrina was not about God’s judgment; it was about a storm that started as a low-pressure zone that slowly, dangerously grew into a tropical wave of low pressure. Katrina had a natural cause, not a supernatural cause. What flooded New Orleans and sent its citizenry into exile was not, as the Dominionists at Grace argued, God running spiritually corrupt, lost souls out of town but rather a catastrophically flawed levee system constructed by human hands. Besides, I believed that what we did to help those affected by the storm—not why the storm or its destruction happened—was what mattered. My Katrina-era messages were just blandly positive—I preached that the storm was a moment to prove to God just how loving we could be to one another—but the Dominionists at Grace were furious nonetheless. “Are you really saying,” they chided me after Sunday services, “that it doesn’t matter how people in New Orleans live? That they can be saved if they’re alcoholics?” I was unflinching in my answer. “Yes, “ I replied sternly, “that’s exactly what I’m saying.” The Dominionists simply shook their heads in disgust at my apostasy.”
― Jerry DeWitt, Hope after Faith: An Ex-Pastor's Journey from Belief to Atheism

“Sitting on the couch in the trailer watching TV one late night, I saw an infomercial for a series of audiocassettes called Attacking Anxiety and Depression from the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety. Without a moment’s hesitation I reached for the phone, called the 800 number on the TV screen and purchased the tapes. When the tapes arrived a few days later, I popped in the first cassette in the sixteen-cassette self-help series—which was comprised of testimonials from people afflicted with panic attacks—and realized that I wasn’t going crazy, that this was indeed a legitimate psychiatric disorder. As I listened to the remainder of the series in our trailer, I began to grasp that my brain could tell me something so convincingly that I had almost no choice but to believe it. During anxiety attacks I actually believed that I was dying. The attacks were so severe that I would have rather known that I was going to have open heart surgery at 9:00 a.m. the next day than a panic attack. That was the power of the nervous system: we can think things that aren’t true and feel and see things that aren’t real. With the Attacking Anxiety and Depression tapes suddenly the subjective no longer held the power for me that it had once held. Indeed, what I was learning about the power of the mind just might explain some of the experiences I’d had in the past—like speaking with God or hearing his voice. It was neurologically possible to hear an audible voice when there was no voice there. I began to entertain the possibility that there was an objective way of looking at my experiences, and that this objective perspective might prove those experiences to be false. Up until that moment seeing truly was believing, but what did it say about my beliefs if I had not seen or heard anything at all?”
― Jerry DeWitt, Hope after Faith: An Ex-Pastor's Journey from Belief to Atheism

“Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely. The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion. Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves”—these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this. —Sam Harris”
― Jerry DeWitt, Hope after Faith: An Ex-Pastor's Journey from Belief to Atheism