You're an Atheist!!!

Well, now my wife AND best friend know that I’m an atheist. My wife let my friend and his wife know about it despite not asking my approval beforehand. She told them that I have a blog, but none of them know how to access it. I didn’t come right out and tell her that I have a blog, but she figured it out as I was doing a lot of writing on my word processor. It was too much of a pain to keep that hidden from her if I wanted to really get a blog going. Plus, she has seen me reading other bloggers posts. Anyway, my wife and friend believe, like many people, that being an Atheist is akin to selling your soul to Lucifer and butchering a million babies. They use the A word like it’s a derogatory term but nothing could be further from the truth. I just don’t take things at face value any more without requiring some kind of proof in the process. Indeed, I believe that the Christian god should have extraordinary evidence to prove his existence. The Bible is laughably inadequate as a source of credibility. Blind faith is just a stupid concept, especially if it applies to believing in things which abandon any sort of credible reference point from which you can refer to. I haven’t seen any jaw dropping miracles in my life time, nor have I experienced many things that couldn’t already be explained by science. Admittedly, there are a few things that still boggle my mind. My mother recovered from a shoulder injury, which was going to require surgery, after we prayed together. Indeed, this does strike me as a bit odd. But, this doesn’t mean that we have to jump to the wild assertion that a supernatural deity must have been involved as a result.

My friend and I had an argument the other day which involved many factors including my lack of belief. It was a quick jab at my newfound disbelief but points to the issue that many atheists face as they break through the shackles of religious dogma. At one point in the argument, he stated, “you’re so smart, but now you’re an atheist”. Maybe, it’s more like, “I’m smart and being an atheist further proves the case”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider myself to be the genius that I once may have been—not that I ever considered myself to be a genius. My mother said that my I.Q. was tested at 160 back in lower school but we know that most I.Q.s drift to the median as we get older. I dread to know what it is now as I can hardly do long subtraction or division by hand anymore. I’m out of practice and used to calculators doing my thinking for me. But I digress.

I think that being called an atheist is really a compliment in disguise. Your right, I don’t believe in a god that butchers children and infants. You can keep that kind of monstrous god all to your lonesome. You can keep the bigot who subjugates women to draconian laws to yourself, and the god who requires that people be burnt to death or stoned if their sexual preferences are contrary to the Hebrew god’s liking. You can have the god that requires rape victims to be stoned if they fail to cry out loud enough, and allows men to take women from other countries after killing their families. Eventually, they may very well end up having to sleep with the man who slaughtered their family. I don’t need to continue to follow a god that can only exist if science is some mass conspiracy that is hell bent on destroying this notion of god altogether. Science isn’t against Intelligent Design because it has a strong religious theme. They are against Intelligent Design because there is no evidence supporting it as it applies to the development of the species. We would have lost out on a multitude of discoveries if scientists would have simply said that god is the reason for everything and not sought out naturalistic explanations. No discoveries have ever pointed to a god once science has properly investigated these various areas of intrigue.

They can keep the god who has influenced so much unnecessary killing and violence throughout the ages. This is the same god who creates people whom he loves, but, then, purposefully destroys them for reasons that no rational being can understand. But, we’re told to just believe because his ways are greater than ours. He creates humans with the capacity to feel both physical and emotional pain. He purposefully created some humans with the foreknowledge that they would die a hideous and torturous death. Presumably, he didn’t try to numb any of the unnecessary pain they would feel in the process. Despite this injustice, he has them murdered for “sins” that they didn’t even commit. The Bible has many passages adhering to this absurd ideology of generational curses. Some passages are in favor of it, while other scriptures speak contradictorily against it.

So really, who is taking the moral high ground here? Call me a pacifist if you want, but I’m not going to kill anybody because someone tells me to. Especially, if he wants me to kill people that pose no immediate threat to my family or myself. In the Bronze Age, this was possibly a reasonable request from a heartless god. But, I think our morality has evolved and we have learned to get along with others despite their sexual preferences, gender or ethnicity. The Bible does not come across as a book that takes the moral high ground. A deity would surely have more sense than 21st century America. The famous Sermon on the Mount does not speak of a deity who has a supernatural grasp on wisdom. There are a multitude of passages that are disastrously ill-advised. Matt Dillahunty does a superb job of dissecting these passages at http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Sermon_on_the_mount. Jesus continues to assert that we shouldn't worry about our current circumstances and live for eternity. This sort of reasoning causes people to be lazy, lack foresight and encourages them to abandon concern as it applies to this life. He equates those that think lustfully upon a woman as adultery, and those that think angrily upon a brother as a murderer—otherwise known as Thought Crimes. Seriously, I’m to equate butchering a group of people with just being very angry with a group of people. I don’t think so.

Please continue to keep me in your atheistic prayers and reasonable thoughts as I continue to struggle to find resolution, clarity and genuine happiness with my position in this life. This life which is the only life we will ever know. Sadly, many will waste their entire life in hopes of a better one to come, but I don’t plan on doing that.