Nate Phelps on Fred Phelps
Offline Check out this blog post recounting Nate Phelps' (Fred Phelps' son) account of the love of Jesus as practiced in the Phelps household. I can't think of any reason to add anything to it. It speaks for itself.
Read the full article here:
“The Bible says ‘spare the rod, spoil the child,’” explained Nate, “and he would be screaming that out as he was beating us.” One Christmas night, Pastor Phelps hit Nate over 200 times with a mattock’s handle, swinging it like a baseball player. Nate would hide out in the garage with his siblings, where he could escape his father’s wrath. What he couldn’t escape, however, was the fear of going to hell. He suffered much abuse growing up under the roof of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church (WBC)—he still suffers today. The church, which believes that “God is hateful,” hasn’t changed its grim outlook since Nate’s time there 30 years ago, but it has expanded its fame. WBC has become well known for picketing funerals, where its followers, predominantly Phelps family members, proclaim that God is punishing “fags and fag enablers.” To further the damage, the church frequently targets military funerals. “WBC will picket the funerals of these Godless, fag army American soldiers when their pieces return home,” their website says. They believe God is punishing America for facilitating homosexuality, which, according to the church, ought to be a capital crime. More recently, WBC planned to protest the funeral of Tim McLean, the young man who was beheaded on a Greyhound bus. However, they were barred from crossing the Canadian border. It is little wonder that Louis Theroux’s BBC documentary on the Phelps’ was titled The Most Hated Family in America. Incidentally, it was when I mentioned this documentary that Nate introduced himself to me.The mattock, a close cousin of the pickaxe, is used to dig through tough, earthy surfaces—it loosens soil, breaks rock, and tears through knotted grass. Its handle is a three-foot wooden shaft, twice the density of a baseball bat and its dual-sided iron head is comprised of a chisel and a pick. It was Pastor Fred Phelps’s weapon of choice when beating his children according to his son, Nate Phelps.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Huh. I wouldn't why Jesus didn't step-in and stabilize the Phelps family. That's just pretty weird...
...Well, unless you're crazy and think that Jesus is imaginary or some shit.
Maybe Phelps just wasn't a 'True Christian'?
Curious also: Where were all of the angry, outraged moderates? Why was Nate suddenly the villainized odd man out after he reached his logical conclusion? Why was he suddenly abandoned and divorced? That's an awfully odd chain of events from a cultural body that likes to claim that it's as opposed to the fundamentalists as any atheist.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I saw a documentary called "Fall from Grace" about that family, and it was sad seeing the horrific shit all those kids are being indoctrinated into. There were a few that escaped the family, and they still express living in fear.
"I've yet to witness circumstance successfully manipulated through the babbling of ritualistic nonsense to an imaginary deity." -- me (josh)
If god can do anything, can he make a hot dog so big even he can't eat all of it?
A good article.
Even when Nate tried to bring up his kids with a less hateful version of Chrisitanity he still left them crying with a fear of hell.
He came to the conclusion that it Christianity just had fear tied to it.
That said, it differs to my own Catholic upbringing.
Did anyone see Shirley Phelpse' first comment?
She lays a scriptural wrath upon him and then pretty much every single reader (Christian and non-Christian alike) lays their own wrath on her.
Yeah, I did notice that. It was nice to see.
This article reflects what I've been saying about Christianity for a long time. It's nice to have a first hand account of the particular effect -- that is, regardless of how much you try to sugar coat it, the core message of Christianity is fear.
For what it's worth, it might be good for readers to have another look at my essay on Christian moderation while Nate Phelps' recollections are still fresh on their minds. Bear in mind, my point is not absolute with regard to individual practitioners. That is, I don't assert that everyone raised with Christian dogma will live in any particular fear. Rather, I'm saying that the dogma itself -- the unmaskable core of Christianity -- is fear.
Religious Moderation
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Pretty interesting clever cool dude. I see pantheism as a big help to eradicating the most dangerous religious dogmas, and Dawkins calls it "sexed up atheism" .... It doesn't generally say the universe is a giant brain ... But there are always nuts using all labels. It's not correct to say all "new age, new thought" philosophy is all woo woo. If rrs Eloise is a nut we are all nuts!
Panentheist, "Neale Donald Walsch Discusses The Emotion Of Fear" - 8 min.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA4HwFHiYyA&feature=related
Wiki - Walsch's vision is an expansion and unification of all present theologies to render them more relevant to our present day and time .... particularly that we are all one with God and one with life, in a shared global state of being. /////////
I get a chuckle out of him and his mega popular audio series like "The New Revelations" and "Conversations with God" ... which got my christian friends re-thinking their dogmatic ideas of idol worship.
I can no longer find the free pod casts on line, surly due to copy write laws. Any ideas where they could be found ... like out of country sites??? File sharing should render them .... Walsh is a pretty good doctor for those under the God of Abraham hocus pocus spell .... "save" a friend !
Focus- Hocus Pocus (live '73) ... wild
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpV5InLw52U
Atheism Books.
This is a good article. It reminds me of my own fear of hell as a child. I don't think children should be taught about hell. I remember in Sunday school they told me that in hell you would burn forever without dying. That there was no light or hope, and that all you could hear was the sound of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then they asked you to imagine a beach full of sand. You were then to imagine a bird would remove a single grain of sand once every year. When that whole beach was empty they told you that was only a single immeasurably small instance of eternity, and we should try to picture what it would be like to spend all that time burning in hell. Another time they did the same thing but instead of a beach they had a one mile wide bronze ball. Each year a bird would fly by and its wing would lightly brush against the ball. We were then to picture how long it would take this action to wear the ball down to nothing.
They seemed to really like birds for some reason. What is it with Christianity and its strange fixation on certain animals? For some reason goat, and snakes are bad, but doves and sheep are good. Why the hell would sheep be better the goats? I think goats a much better than sheep, smarter at least. At any rate kids shouldn't have to deal with this kind of crap. It's bad enough they tell them that some fat guy in a red suit comes down their chimney every year to deliver presents from his sweatshop in the north.
I suppose I can basically see the reason they do it. If they really believe that the hell they describe exists then I suppose a miserable childhood is a small price to pay to stay away from it, but it fucking doesn’t exist. When's this crap going to end, how long are people supposed to pay for some stupid stories some people made up thousands of years ago.
In one part of the article the author talks about trying to teach his child a more moderate form of Christianity. As far as I’ve seen there is no moderate Christianity that believes in hell. There is nothing moderate about eternal damnation. Let me say it again. If you believe that certain people on this earth for whatever reason are going to be punished eternally for their finite mistakes in this very finite life then you are not moderate. I wouldn't wish Hitler to suffer the kind of hell that was taught to me as a child.
This was why I finally quit Christianity. Not because of logic or reason even though the complete stupidity of the religion became obvious to me latter. The reason I stopped was because one day I asked my self one question. If it was my choice would god exist? I though about this awhile and finally I decided that even if I was one of the lucky people going to heaven if other people would go to hell as a consequence then I would rather there was no god, and when I realized this all my faith just faded away.
The Christians at my church told me that the reason bad things happened in this world even though god is good is because of man’s sins. They told me that people in other countries that had never even been taught the word of god would still go to hell because of the fault of man who was not there to minister to them. They told me that people must go to hell because god loves us so much he gave us free choice, and if we choose wrong then because of his infinite, perfect and unfathomable justice he must put us in hell. This god as they described him to me, if he really existed, if he really loved us as much as they said he did, then the best thing this god could do for humanity would be to destroy himself.
Mod edit. All links to your crappy website are classed as kill on sight.
I can tolerate to some degree religious fundamentalism (much of my family are self styled fundies)... They call themselves this because they believe in "The Fundamentals" but none of them are out blowing themselves up or picketing funerals. They will tell me Jesus loves me all day long and they love me to etc...
But R-tards like members of WBC...grr....
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
Ratdog that was a great post.
I identified with everything that you were saying.
Why is everyone picking on Fred Phelps? He is a model citizen and only wants to spread hate and bigotry. Whats not to like about that? You guys are nothing but a bunch of liberal commie pinkos.
You will all burn in hell!
(NOTE to self: did I think this, or type it?)
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Sheep are better than goats because the rams don't piss in their beards like the billies do. Therefore, they stink less.
For the rest of your post, I agree.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
That's a fucked up religion, rat.
I wonder what they would do if a secular movement used similar tools to promote an agenda. Well, I don't wonder, I already know.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.