Firm atheist shaken by science, eating disorders

Decidedly “100% atheist,” Mariah Jones pitied Christians, believing they reject reason and the advancements of scientific knowledge.

“I did not believe in God,” Mariah says on a 2019 video on her YouTube channel. “I didn’t believe in spirituality at all. I thought believing in such things was silly. Basically I was just a strong believer in science.”

Right after high school, Mariah joined the Navy in 2013. It was in the Navy that she developed anorexia and bulimia.

“It grew more and more aggressive as the years went by,” she says.

Once out of the Navy, she enrolled in college, and she positively relished the science classes which at first affirmed her belief in nothing.

“I used to enjoy when people would bring up God so that I could try and destroy their argument with science.” she admits. “I would ask them impossible questions that would put them in this awkward position and make it pretty much impossible for them to answer.

“I hated when people would talk about Jesus.”

Her distaste for Christianity was extreme, fueled by the grip of the evil one in her life.

“My mentality towards Christians and anyone who was religious was like, You’re wasting your entire life trying to live by these impossible standards and these rules that supposedly God created just to go to a place after you die,” she says. “I thought religion was a man-made construct that was harmful to people.”

Then a boomerang struck in 2017 in her second year in college. The same science that in the first year of college affirmed her atheist became the science of the second year of college that undermined her atheism.

Specifically, how could biological molecules with astronomical number of atoms all sequenced with confunding minute precision have just come together by chance? she wondered.

SEE RELATED ARTICLE: SCIENTIST SY GARTE BECAME A CHRISTIAN WHEN HE STUDIED MOLECULAR BIOLOGY.

So at first science contributed to her atheistic arrogance. Then, as the classes advanced, they deconstructed it.

“Having to accept that everything just formed on its own by itself on accident, it didn’t make sense to me,” Mariah admits. “It really started to bother me because deep down I didn’t want to believe something. I didn’t want to take that responsibility.”

Groomed by pimp, girl rescued from anxiety by God

MySpace, Heather found just the sort of compassionate older friend to whom she, at age 12, could confide her troubles, things she couldn’t share with her own parents.

Then, he showed up on the evening news under arrest for intent to prostitute a minor. Heather’s profile popped up as one of his top eight on MySpace, a now virtually defunct social media.

“I felt like talking to him was a rush because it was a secret,” she recounts in a CBN video. “I saw the red flags on multiple occasions, but I ignored them because it was not what I wanted to believe. I could talk to him about school. I could talk to him about family. He was this unbiased person I could bring in. He was kind. He was someone I could confide in. I enjoyed talking to him.”

When the man was arrested, Heather feared she would be raped. She had no idea if he was in jail or released. All she knew was that he lived in her town.

Her fears grew into gnawing anxieties that dogged her for most of the rest of her life.

As a teen, she discovered anorexia and bulimia — and this gave her a sense of control.

“I was so anxious and afraid that I remember I wasn’t hungry,” she says. “I remember thinking, oh this is a great distraction. I felt powerful.”

Next Heather turned to “cutting” — the practice of slitting your wrists to toy with suicide and express desperation.

“There was an overwhelming release of tension with cutting,” she says.

During her sophomore year of high school, 11 loved ones died within eight months.

“I felt more out-of-control having people being ripped away from me, people dying too young,” she says. “I started cutting a lot more, a lot deeper.”

By now, she was receiving professional counseling — to no avail.

“I kept punishing myself for the mistakes that I had made,” she admits. “It distracted me from the sadness I felt. But more than anything, it helped with my anxiety.”

She attended college a few hours from home. The change of scenario did nothing to help her. Without her family watching out for her destructive tendencies, Heather indulged her coping mechanisms.

“I felt like there was nothing left that even the world could offer me and I was not going to get better,” she says. Read the rest: Grooming online of girls.

God helped Ben King overcome purging

In the quest for victory in competitive cycling, Ben King submitted himself to grueling training sessions that very nearly made he drop off the edge of healthy choices and even sanity.

“Cycling is one of the most demanding sports in the world. You don’t get to determine the pace; the pace is set. It’s like getting pulled along on a choke collar,” Ben says on White Chair films.

“And then you have the climbs and you get dropped. It’s a very explosive, intense knock out punch. The training, over-reaching, over-compensating, ups and downs burn 6,000 calories. You come back and have to have self-control. The things that you are trying to control end up controlling you. That really starts to wear you down and break you.”

In his first competition in Europe at age 16, he was staggered by daunting competition.

“We just got hammered. We got thrashed,” he says. “I’ve never suffered like that just to finish races.”

Ben decided he needed to buckle down and get serious about training. He read about pro-training and diet. He looked at he pros.

“They just looked like skeletons,” he remembers. “I started to believe that the lighter I got, the faster I would get.”

Trying to kick it in high gear, Ben would ride in the morning, lift weights in the middle of the day, go to track practice, go home and cram in his homework — along with swim practice.

“I would just die in my bed every night.”

Then he started purging. One night on his way back from swim practice, he decided he had eaten too much, and thinking this would weigh him down on the road race, he pulled over on the side of the road, opened the door and induced vomiting.

“In this twisted way, it gave me this sense of control,” he says. “It became a habitual thing. I began to wear down emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually.”

Then blood showed up in the toilet.

“I was totally beating my body into submission. The thing I was trying to control was beginning to control me.”

At 17, Ben was ravaging his body in an abusive self-competition — all in the search of getting faster and faster.

He was training three to four times a day and was purging every time he felt he had eaten too much.

He arrived home one night and just clumped up the stairs and said goodnight to his mother but she called him back down to wash some dishes.

He was tired and temperamental and went into the kitchen and started to wash the dishes roughly.

Ben broke one of his mom’s favorite bowls and her temper flared.

He began seeing red and ran out the door, into the woods and kept on running. In the dark woods, he remembers staring at the very weird and odd movements of the branches.

“I just felt like I was surrounded by this evil presence,” Ben says. “It may just have been the evil I had allowed into my life.” Read the rest of Ben King Christian cyclist.

Justine Bateman found God overcoming anorexia

Actress Justine Bateman thought her binge eating and purging was normal, but when a friend gently suggested she had an addiction as serious as alcohol or drugs, she entered a 12-step program. That’s where she found Jesus.

“I found the highest high by hitting the lowest low,” the 51-year-old told the New York Daily News. “I’ve actually become the person I always wanted to become, although not in the way I thought it would happen.”

The former star from “Family Ties” and “Men Behaving Badly” battled eating disorders for 10 years before getting help. “I realized I had eating disorders, went into recovery and found a relationship with God,” Bateman recounted.

Bateman said it all started at age 16, when she suffered bouts of anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating, without understanding the danger of what she was doing. “I had a horrible body image,” she said. “I always had the tape measure out. I was always getting on the scale.” Read the rest of the story.