Atheism and me.

I am an atheist.  I do not believe in any god. When asked by people about my atheism, I don’t give a slippery “I’m simply spiritual” answer to get out of arguments with religious folks. I am not spiritual. I am logical. I am rational.  I don’t believe in a human soul. I don’t believe in life after death, sin, hell, heaven, angels, reincarnation, ghosts, magic, vampires, or any other supernatural event. I don’t believe that there is a single, supernatural, magical event possible in the entire universe. I believe the universe is natural, follows laws of physics, and that no being or outside force created the universe.

How could I believe such dangerous, blatantly heretical ideology after my 15 childhood years as a devout, struggling Christian, raised in the church by devout believers, in a family that ridicules me for such beliefs? I can easily tell you what I believe, and why, because divorcing your mind from the belief system hammered into you since birth is a difficult process, and requires great deliberation and rationalization in order to become a whole and mentally healthy individual. But part of my individual story is what led me to first turn my back on my Christian upbringing and question ideas my parents and myself held most dear. Therefore, I will share part of my history.

As a child, my parents instilled in me a love of reading, science, and in general I developed a curious and exploratory nature. Instead of little league and swim teams, as a child I played with multiplication tables and math flash cards, the game “memory”, and engaged in a delightful fantasy life with he-man, G.I. Joe, army men, teenage mutant ninja turtles, and other 80s and 90s marketing schemes. Good times, but perhaps a little low on the social interaction side of things. In addition, a great portion of my time was dedicated to church and religion. I was not one of those people who took religion lightly. Although my dedication waxed and waned over the years, I read and studied my bible in great detail, prayed to the lord to take away my earthly desires and forgive my sins, and spent summers at church camp singing praise and worship songs, memorizing bible verses, and re-enacting the story of the crucifixion. In high school, just before I began to question my belief system, I was happy as a clam, went back to church camp as a counselor, tried to lead children to the lord, and even baptized a couple of kids and then later baptized one of my high school classmates.  (I have since apologized profusely to the classmate)

In high school, I really began to see that I was different than others, that I was a social outcast, and realized that I was hated just as much for my intelligence as for my lack of conformity to popular music and fashion trends, lack of interest in organized sports, and even for my strong Christian beliefs.  I brought my bible to school at times, sat it on my desk, and instead of the intelligent debate or outrage I thought it would cause, instead it just made me look like an extreme weirdo with no friends, which is what I was. It isn’t easy being Christian amongst your high school peers, I will grant you that. But then I graduated high school, and was thrust into the world of college, for which I was ill prepared.  As a Christian (and as a social outcast), I had never been to any party, never tasted alcohol, never smoked cigarettes or tried drugs in my life prior to college. I was never once invited to a single party or tailgate drinking fest out at the lake during my entire high school career. College was a chance to reinvent myself from scratch. As soon as I recognized that fact, I was on a roll.  I got into some honors classes, and met people who changed my life forever, although they might not have realized it at the time. Intelligent people who did weird things like go to protests against native American sports mascots, go to gay rights rallies, and were generally interesting people and more like myself than anyone I had ever met before in my entire life.  It was an easy and natural thing to become swept up in the spirit of rebellion. I rebelled against my childhood belief system, learned about other religions and belief systems, and gave just about every religion a fair go. I very sincerely conducted various magical ceremonies with silver pentagrams and colored candles, went to Wiccan holiday parties, and made friends with fat ugly white people who claimed to practice polyamorism in addition to having generally low personal hygiene.  While I learned a lot about other cultures and interacted with a lot of people, in general what I learned from all of this is that nothing I have ever tried ever produced one visible shred of proof or one single positive outcome that made me a true believer.  Additionally, as far as I could see, after reading a great deal about ancient Egyptian religion and other old stuff, most modern religions are fairly similar in structure, and clearly ripped each other off as new religions borrowed from the old and were absorbed into large cultures over time.  Therefore, I became bored with organized religion in general, chalked it all up as hogwash, and decided it was time to answer some serious questions for myself.  What is truth?  What do I believe in?  What is the basis for right and wrong, and how can I decide for myself?

At that point I began to realize that I didn’t currently care whether or not I believed in god, or in any particular religion. They were all the same. They could all be a decent basis for moral instruction, and they could all be used as an excuse for slaughtering millions of innocent people. Any religion could be used by evil or good people. I wondered whether an atheist could possibly be a good person. Why not just go around stealing and murdering. I started reading up on the subject, and it turned out these were the most common, basic questions asked about atheism. Since these are common questions, there are loads of good answers to these questions. For example, most legal and moral classes do not even include religion. For example, the famous class at Harvard, titled, “What’s the right thing to do?” is available on you tube, and discusses morals without even bringing up religion.

For me, there are now more important arguments for atheism than the basis for a moral system outside of religious dogma. The real question is, Why do you believe in God? What is the point? Is it just because your parents told you it was true, so therefore it must be true?  In my life, I have tried to reject every single idea and concept making up my personality, and then I rebuilt myself from scratch.  Several times. In fact, for many years, it was a personal goal of mine, to take one belief or habit per month and totally erase it from my personality, and replace it with another belief or habit. This method of personality rebuilding was actually devised by a famous witch, Aleister Crowley.  (Yes, that is who Ozzy Ozbourne was singing about.) This is not so crazy, and I came across a similar idea when practicing yoga meditation. In meditation, you have to sit in a semi-uncomfortable position for a long time, while not distracting your mind with all the regular stuff: TV, music, daily worries and plans, etc. In meditation, the idea is to focus with a clear and blank mind. The problem is, most of us are barely sane, and have loads of hang-ups and personal failures and regrets stacked up in heaps inside the back corners of our minds. So, when you try to sit peacefully and focus, first you are distracted by all the crap floating around inside your head. The day-to-day stuff.  However, once you meditate enough, and you learn how to quiet your mind and are able to sit comfortably, then you come across an even bigger problem. All your regrets, past mistakes, failures, and other negative emotions come rushing to the surface whenever you remove all the barriers you have built over the years to keep such issues behind locked doors. Now when you try to meditate, you are thrown upon a stormy sea of your past and this again prevents you from properly meditating in order to find peace. So, you have to deal with all of your issues. For me, while struggling with all the weight of past while trying to meditate, I eventually came to a revelation that changed my life forever. All that stuff I regretted, all the sadness and pain I felt, or had caused other people, it wasn’t me.   As I slowly was able to let go of each heavy sadness, I learned that I am not the sum of my actions. No matter what I had done or how many mistakes I regretted, those things were not actually “me” at the very core of my being.  No, there was something more: there was the possibility for future change, there was the very fact that I was alone in the universe, and that I was able to at least able to say that I was alive. To me, mediation is the process of being able to let everything go, to fully accept yourself, and to become at peace with the concept that you, by nature, are actually alone in the universe. And I learned that there is something, some force, at the heart of each human being that is more than what you have done. This is not surprising, for without the element of hope there would be no stories of heroes, no unlikely martyrs dying for a good cause.  I call it hope; others who have come to the same conclusion as me may have called it “the soul.” I don’t know. All I know is that throughout the decade-long process of destroying and reinventing myself, I did a lot of stupid stuff, tried out a lot of various lifestyles, and in the end decided that nearly all of it was unnecessary.

So, now the reasons why I am atheist:

1.       Most important reason: I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe that any magical/supernatural claim can hold up to the most basic scientific and logical scrutiny. For example: Vampires? Could they exist? No.  How could something that is dead, without a heartbeat, not decay and rot?  How could muscles work without fuel? Why wouldn’t the blood just turn into a gross rotten mess? What biological mechanism could possible make sunlight fatal?  For example: Can there be a wizard who shoots fire out of his hands? No. that is stupid. How could heat be generated from nowhere? Why wouldn’t he burn himself? Where did the energy come from to start a combustion reaction?  What exactly is combusting?  Are there some particles in the air on fire, or what? For example, can there be a god?  Answer no. why not?  Because the belief in god IMPLIES a belief in magic. That something can be created from nothing, without any regard to the laws of physics and laws of every other science. That god can cause things to happen “miraculously” and instantly means, by definition, that all other magical beliefs such as vampires, werewolves, and wizards are in fact possible and real. Similarly, since such magical creatures do not exist, and in fact no single supernatural event has ever been demonstrated to me, I induce that since god is a supernatural entity, he also does not exist. Although that is not direct logic, it is, in the face of all evidence, the most likely conclusion. If you accept the possibility of god, you must also accept vampires. I cannot accept that. Therefore there is no Santa, there is no god, and to me they are exactly equal. Equally silly, equally impossible, and both having exactly no place in the mind of a rational, thinking creature except as a nice fairy tale. One thing that really annoys me is when religious people tell me, “when you are having problems, you will turn back to god then” or, “as soon as things go wrong, I’ll see you praying then.” This implies that my atheism is a vanity and an act of childish rebellion, and that in the face of adversity I will turn back to the “truth.” In my darkest hour, when I have nothing left to rely on, I will never once utter one prayer, never ask god for one ounce of forgiveness or mercy, and never once ask any supernatural power to save me from the natural course of events. That is profoundly against the core of my being, and my beliefs, rather than just being spoon fed to me as a child, were formed by difficult deliberation when I was an adult. To me, it would make just as much sense to turn to Santa Claus for help as it makes to turn to god or Jesus, because they are all exactly equal in value to me.  Going along with no supernatural explanations, where is god? Does he have mass? Is he in a place, or is he in a non-place outside of human existence?  If god is in a non-place (no mass, no physical dimensions, not in the actual universe), then that implies that there could be other non-places. With other gods or whatever living in them. Also, where is my soul? In my body? In a different non-place?  Why would my soul need to be physically inside of my body?  Is it somehow connected to me, like an umbilical cord? I don’t get it. To believe in souls or god, you simply have to believe in magic.

2.       I don’t believe in life after death.  Or, rather, I see no need to complicate things by introducing an idea for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Some people bring up the idea of ghosts of their beloved family members. See argument #1.  If there are ghosts, then there are certainly werewolves. No supernatural creatures exist in my world.  I personally feel that no advantage is gained from the concept of a soul, eternal life, or any life-after-death whatsoever. This is a human idea, created by humans in order to deal with the loss of loved ones and the fear of death and the loneliness of old age. Since I have already gained the proper perspective from my own experiences, I no longer need the silly vanity that one day I will be reunited with my loved ones, that one day everything will be made right, and that one day there will be no pain. No. I am against that idea. I will try to right all my wrongs now, in this life, and live up to my responsibilities, and will mourn the passing of my friends and family with sadness that they are gone forever, and will honor them in word and deed. I accept that pain. I think we only get one go-round and then that’s it.

3.       I don’t believe in hell. I don’t need the fear of hell.  Despite what preachers and Sunday school teachers burdened my young mind with, the idea that if I did bad things I would go to hell, I don’t believe in punishment after death.  I don’t feel that fear is the best motivator for good social behavior.  To me, the creation of hell in religious ideology is too similar to the philosophical perfect prison, the Panopticon. The most evil men in the world (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) have tried to employ the concept of the Panopticon. In this perfect prison, every prisoner is separate and cannot see or communicate with any other prisoner. Also, the prisoner cannot see the guard or know when he/she is being observed. The fear of punishment is real, and examples are regularly made of bad behavior. In this perfect controlled system, a single guard can control an unlimited number of prisoners, because they learn to behave through fear. There is no escape. They never know when they are being watched. Hell is a little too much like the Panopticon for my liking.

4.       I don’t fully understand the Christian conception of “god.”  Logically, the idea of god makes no sense to my mind. There are too many logical contradictions. However, I don’t accept the argument that understanding of god is impossible, and that humans are too small and insignificant to possibly grasp the concept of god.  I will not blindly follow someone who seems to be a contradiction to me.  Reasons why god makes no sense:  If god is “supreme being” of everything, and created everything, then why did he do it? Loneliness? Boredom? Scientific Experiment?  Wasn’t he already complete, since he is “everything?” If he felt the universe needed to exist because he felt incomplete, doesn’t that, by definition, make him NOT the Supreme Being? Which reason terrifies you the most? If God created everything, why did he stop? Is this it? Is the universe “done?”  It doesn’t really feel done to me. Maybe god ran out of creative power, and now he just sits back, wondering if he should have created more types of zebras instead of goddamn mosquitos.  I just don’t get it. Are we his first crack at creating life, or were there 1600 failed experiments first?  Why even create a Garden of Eden?  Seems like that idea didn’t work out too well. Isn’t the failure of the Garden of Eden a failure on god’s part?  I thought he couldn’t fail. The whole creation story just seems silly to me, full of pointless contradictions, and obviously has been twisted throughout history. Why put the two no-no trees in the garden, treat your newly created humans like retarded children, and put them in an obvious situation where any child would disobey?  Man, god is kind of an jerk! Couldn’t he have put the trees ANYWHERE else, for example, on the moon? What is the Garden of Eden story even trying to convey?  If god is the creator, why does he need these magic trees of good and evil and knowledge at all?  What is the point of them? And why such harsh punishment for such a silly, childish normal behavior. Try this punishment on your own kids?  “Oh, hey kids, sorry I left that tray of brownies on your bed. Since you ate one, you are now no longer happy and immortal, but instead you will die after a difficult life, p.s.  I’ve cursed the whole earth so that all creatures will get old and die, it will be really hard to survive, hard to grow crops, and generally very depressing.  And women, oh damn, you are really screwed. You have to have babies. No more rib-clones for you. There is now a 10% chance of death for the next several thousand years before modern medicine is invented anytime you want to have a new human.  Oh, also, menstruation. You are welcome.” Wow, god, you are mean. That punishment seems a bit severe, don’t you think? For an apple? However, in the Garden of Eden story, at least god acts like a nerdy, spoiled scientist conducting a weird creepy experiment. This is how I would expect god to act, like a creator.  Playing with his experiment.  Making up stupid arbitrary rules. Later in the bible, he is portrayed quite differently (different personality), which also bothers me. But the main point is that I don’t see the need for god in my explanation of the known universe. I don’t need to have all the answers or know where everything came from. I’m fine not knowing.

5.       There is no real difference between the Christian god and any other “pagan” gods/goddesses. Also, throughout the old testament, god is portrayed as no different from any other ancient god, jealous, vengeful, demanding sacrifices, murdering whole cities, taking slaves, and generally I can see no real distinction between the Judeo-Christian god and any random Egyptian god like Amen-Ra. In fact, if you read up on Amen-Ra, you can see that the New Testament Jesus is practically an exact rip-off. The only difference was that ancient Hebrews must have been particularly good warriors, with advanced weaponry, and therefore their god got a good reputation for winning battles. Therefore, other gods became unpopular. However, thanks to modern archeology and the fact that so many religions wrote stuff down, we can see that religions have included a “Jesus” resurrection god as far back as recorded history goes.  Pan, Amen-Ra, and dozens of other, older examples of resurrection gods exist, who all die and come back to life (sometimes even after 3 days!), originally signifying the changing of the seasons. To me this means that the concept of Jesus is not new, not unique, and has very little to do with Christianity.  The writers of Christianity simply twisted an old idea of spring rebirth into “erasing all the debt of evil in world.” Quite a crafty move. My point is that if you read up on enough older religions, you will see that Christianity is nothing new, and is simply a mishmash of previous religions, taking all the components that are most useful in controlling a large group of people through fear and blind devotion.  This is a commonality in religions. It is not my main point that I think religion has often been used to control people and do horrible deeds. IT has, but my main point is that I can’t tell the difference between different religions. For example, if I came here from another planet, and gave all 10 major religions a fair chance to explain their case to me and why I should join up, I probably would not pick Christianity or any of the others.  Despite most religions claiming that they have the one true god, and that all 5000 gods of the last few thousand years were the idols of primitive pagans, in reality any of the 5 or 10 thousand choices of gods from human history have equal likelihood of being chosen by an alien visitor. To me, it seems safer and easier to assume that there is no god, rather than to pick one from all the mess.

6.       I don’t believe in divine forgiveness. I don’t need anyone to pay for my crimes.  The idea of Jesus doesn’t sit right with me at all. If god is the Supreme Being, what exactly is Jesus? The less Supreme Being? Why is Jesus god’s only son?  Does he have a supreme mother? Supreme sister?  Why do they use a human relationship (father-son) to describe a non-human entity?  What was Jesus doing before the New Testament, just watching people murder each other down on earth?   Why does Jesus not act like he knows everything in the bible, but instead acts like a normal dude in the New Testament? Did he temporarily lose his memory when he was magically implanted into a teenager’s uterus?  So many questions. Anyways, I feel that I have to own up to my own mistakes. I believe in personal responsibility. I don’t want to be saved. I don’t want someone to make up for all my sins. I want to make things right with whoever I have wronged. I don’t agree that Jesus even makes sense. What is so special about Jesus? Why is his sacrifice greater than any human’s? For example, why couldn’t a really nice guy have dies for the sins of the world? Why did it have to be this Jesus character? Seems pretty ridiculous when I think about it. So, one guy, apparently a god, or god’s son, or son-god, or sun-god as he was originally called when his name was Amen-Ra, came to erase all the sin of the world forever and ever? And all he had to do was be killed, be dead like 3 days, and then that’s it?  How does that make any sense?  The story makes such a big deal about the fact that Jesus was separated for the first time from the power of god, and therefore he made a really big sacrifice for me. Whoop-DE-do. Sometimes I lose my phone and I’m cut off from my wife for up to 3 days, which I feel is a much bigger sacrifice. And why is that good enough to erase all the debt of the evil in world?   It seems like Jesus got off kind of easy on this one. He didn’t have to get killed 10000 times, each in a different way, until the end of 1000 years in the bottom of a lake of acid or anything like that. No, they just killed his once, and then he’s only out of action for like 3 days and then he gets to go back to being super powerful and famous again. That’s like me agreeing to get kicked in the balls once in exchange for getting all of Oprah’s money and houses.  Seems like a pretty one-sided deal.

7.       I don’t believe that humans need the concepts of heaven and hell (reward and punishment) in order to have a moral / ethical system in place that acts as the backbone of civilization. The bible acts like it had to tell us exactly what is wrong and what is right, and that we shouldn’t question what is wrong and right, we should just do as we are told. Again, I feel that this is a whitewashed, false view of the world. Even though the Old Testament paints a pretty depressing picture of humans as sodomizing, teen rapists who would murder their own family members in order to commit incest, I’m not buying that. I think that most humans are not evil, and that this human depravity is a myth cooked up in order to convince people that they can’t possibly exist without the carefully controlled rules of organized religion. Again, please watch the freely available series “what’s the right thing to do” in order to at least get the idea that people have been making up civilized rules of behavior without any religion involved for thousands of years, and actually didn’t go around raping and killing 24-7, despite what the old testament claims.

8.       I don’t believe that there is one set of rules that is right for everyone to follow. The bible clearly states many rules throughout, and I disagree with several of them. I also agree with several of them. But mainly, I want the option to evaluate and reject rules that I find objectionable. That is the basis of a democratic legal system. However, I take it one step further, to say that perhaps it is okay for some individuals to break rules that the majority of society follows in order to ensure that a certain element of chaos and randomness exists in the world. Fringe behavior may be helpful in the long run to ensure a society’s health and survival.  And society generally tolerates small amounts of fringe behavior. However, this is not really what the majority of Christians believe, and most religions regulate behavior. One of the functions of many gods is way of giving rules to society, and this is one reason I disagree with the concept of any god-entity. Or any ruler that claims deity, or any dictator. Same idea. Let me think for myself.

9.       I disagree strongly with the concept of divine intervention. I’m not even exactly sure where modern Christianity stands on this issue. Is god interacting with the world or not?  Does he have personal relationships with his slaves (followers) or not? Does prayer heal, or not? But I have great concern for people who turn their troubles over to an invisible God in the hope that he will help them, save them, or generally grant them good favor / not death. I see no difference between Native Americans doing a rain dance, or a Methodist asking her congregation to pray for her sick mother.  The very concept of trying to have your problems magically solved is abhorrent to me. Lazy, foolish, and cruel to even encourage people to engage in such behavior. The day when you show me a scientific experiment in which god specifically and 100% of the time answers the prayers of a single church for 50 years, is the day when I will start believing in god. This to me is not only one of the biggest examples of the non-existence of god, but is one of the cruelest hoaxes ever played on the dim-witted in history. Prayer? Are you serious?  So, if prayer works so well, then why would you ask other people to pray for you? What is the point? Is god hard of hearing?  Does he only answer petitions that have been signed by at least 10000 voters? Either prayer works and god is real; or prayer doesn’t work, and stop subjecting millions of people to a false hope, then convincing them that everything that happens is the will of god. If everything that happens is the will of god, then why pray? Why do anything? Why not sit down in a small town and just watch TV every night, and never learn a single thing about the rest of the world?  Oh, wait, that is what actually happens with most small town Christians. I forgot.

10.   I disagree with divine judgment.  In most theologies, god judges human souls after their death, in order to determine what sort of an afterlife they will have. Most super heroes and comic books are to some extent a criticism or exploration of the idea of divine judgment, and its pros and cons. For example, superman, Spider-man, and batman do not kill, but simply hand over bad guys to the legal system, in effect handing over judgment to god. However some superheroes, notably wolverine, have no problem offing the bad guy.  Another obvious example is the Punisher. Although on the surface, it seems as though these characters are critiquing the punishment of evil in the short term by the legal system vs. taking the law into your own hands, many stories are more about the punishment of evil in the long run. For example, the character ghost rider is the right hand man of Satan and has the power to punish people’s souls. At any rate, I don’t feel that a god I don’t agree with or believe in should have the power of divine judgment. It just seems so stupid when you consider all the different religions and all the different ideas about god. Do Muslims get judged by the same god as Christians? I don’t see how this makes sense.  But, again, I feel that you are only alive for a short while on earth and then you die. I don’t like the idea of divine judgment and feel it makes god out to be some sort of Egyptian or Greek ancient god. It’s just a stupid and unfair concept.

11.   I don’t believe in the end of the world. I believe that humans are just are part of the life on earth, and that even if humans were completely wiped out, life on earth would continue on unabated, perfectly happy without us. Thus, I don’t think humans are the end of the line. God in most religions is a human-centric persona, with life on earth being all about the existence of humans. That is silly. We aren’t all that important. Humans are not required on earth. On the other hand, certain categories of animals are important to the cycles of the planet. Tree-movers. Damn builders. Corpse eaters. Swamp plants. Etc.

12.   Any other explanation is as equally likely as god is. What is the difference between “God” being the supreme creator, or on the other hand, a super advanced race of aliens pretending to be god, and simply causing “miracles” and “Jesus” and other religious things throughout history by using super advanced technology? Maybe they are using cloaking technology? Maybe they exist in subspace, another dimension, and they can see us and affect us but we can’t see them? What would be the difference? How would you know?

13.   I don’t believe in the weight of history. I prefer to make up my own mind. For example, in philosophical arguments, people ask how they can prove that they exist, that the world exists, and that time exist. Answer: you can’t.  We just believe it to be true. There is, of course, no evidence against us existing, that all this reality is real and not some holographic illusion like in the Matrix, and that we weren’t born yesterday with fake memories implanted. But to me, this idea raises an interesting question about god and religion. If you found out tomorrow that everything you know is a fake memory, and that all of human history, everything that you have ever heard about or read or were taught in school, that was actually just fake memories implanted in your  head yesterday. Everything you know about god, they made it all up. Would you still believe in god? If you found out that this was true, would you go on believing, or would you start a new life? To me, this is similar to what every atheist goes through at some point. To reject the weight of history, their childhood, their upbringing, in order to gain the freedom to make up his or her own mind about things. And it feels a lot like being told that everything was implanted in your head by aliens.

These are just a few reasons off the top of my head that I don’t believe in god.