{"id":3229,"date":"2013-03-03T22:07:10","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T22:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/?p=3229"},"modified":"2015-02-18T11:05:11","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T11:05:11","slug":"2013-03-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/2013-03-03\/","title":{"rendered":"My Religious Evolution:<br>From Being a Simple Catholic,<br>to a Conservative Preacher,<br>to an Agnostic Atheist"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4 align=\"center\"><font color=\"black\">Tom Bergstrom<\/font><\/h4>\n<h4 align=\"center\"><font color=\"black\">March 3, 2013<\/font><\/h4>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3244\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3244\" style=\"width: 233px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/tom-bergstrom\/2013-03-03-tom-bergstrom-300\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3244\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3244\" alt=\"Tom Bergstrom\" src=\"http:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/2013-03-03-Tom-Bergstrom-300.jpg\" width=\"233\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3244\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tom Bergstrom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Tom Bergstrom, a Humanist Community member will share important things in his life in this talk. He grew up in a blue collar town of 78,000 in southeast Wisconsin as a practicing Catholic. As a child he was mostly interested in riding his bike fast, and then later developed an interest in world events. However, in his teens he became ill.<\/p>\n<p>For years during Tom&#8217;s teens, his best friend used fear tactics to challenge Tom to join the friend&#8217;s church. When Tom was 18, he finally joined his friend&#8217;s small modest conservative Church Of Christ. After eight years in the Church of Christ or the &#8220;C of C&#8221;, Tom found out that he could preach. His short preaching career began in his 20&#8217;s and lasted a few years from 1991 to about 1994. By 1999 he went through a divorce which led to a new discovery on Christian hypocrisy.<\/p>\n<p>About this he says, &#8220;This hypocrisy opened my eyes. I educated myself about philosophy, Taoism, Buddhism, evolution, US history, particle physics, and other sciences. This new education eventually led me to become agnostic. \u00a0At the same time as I was becoming progressive, American politics was becoming more conservative. Thus, I remembered my old Bible training which taught that there is a big difference between basic Jesus&#8217; saying to love your neighbor and with right-wing American Christian propaganda. The right-wings&#8217; lying rhetoric in the name of Jesus encouraged me to write, blog, protest, join socialists, join humanists, and to expose conservative right-wing American Christians&#8217; hypocritical propaganda. I hope to open your eyes to the magnitude of the false Christian hypocrisy I have seen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You may view Tom&#8217;s slides <a title=\"Tom Bergstrom slides\" href=\"http:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/My-Religious-Evolution.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/64180805\" height=\"281\" width=\"500\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/64180805\">Humanist Community Forum (2013-03-03): My Religious Evolution (Tom Bergstrom)<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/user2798508\">Brian Davis<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Bergstrom March 3, 2013 Tom Bergstrom, a Humanist Community member will share important things in his life in this talk. He grew up in a blue collar town of 78,000 in southeast Wisconsin as a practicing Catholic. As a child he was mostly interested in riding his bike fast, and then later developed an &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/2013-03-03\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My Religious Evolution:<br \/>From Being a Simple Catholic,<br \/>to a Conservative Preacher,<br \/>to an Agnostic Atheist&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[243,26],"tags":[102,84,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3229"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7607,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3229\/revisions\/7607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanists.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}