I'm An Atheist, Why Aren't You?

There are two topics you are never supposed to talk about, politics and religion. Sadly, it's absolutely true. If you want to start an argument or damage your personal relationships just open up these topics. Especially religion. This taboo subject can and does cause strife. So let's open it up.

Nothing will get you the stinkface faster than saying you're an atheist. First we'll get some general housekeeping out of the way. An atheist doesn't believe in god the singular or gods the plural. An agnostic believes that humans cannot know God or anything beyond material phenomenon. It should be pointed out that most agnostics adhere to a very loose version of this philosophy, simply saying they don't know whether there is a God or not. A deist believes in a personal God based on reason and that God created the world subject to natural laws and takes no interest in it. Then there's everybody else, the faithful if you will.

The three so called Great Religions of the world are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They have that title because they are the oldest and most dominant monotheistic, which means you get one God, religions. The oldest but smallest numbers is Judaism. Within Christianity, there are over one billion Catholics and yes in spite of what some sects preach, Catholics are Christian, in fact they are the foundation the whole thing is built on. The youngest, beginning roughly around 622 A.D., is Islam with approximately one and a half billion adherents. All three have various factions and interpretations for the alleged same path. All three follow extremely contradictory holy texts.

For Christians if you've met the necessary criteria, principally if you believe Jesus Christ is your saviour, and get into heaven, you will meet God and dwell forever in paradise. It's important to note that many sects of Christianity believe that Catholics are going to hell. Interesting side note here, all of the imagery we have of what hell is comes courtesy of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri and the artists inspired by it. Hell had no such descriptions in the early church, this fictional imagery was coopted by religion to scare the shit out of the flock. This anti Catholic sentiment surrounds the Papacy and the fact that the early church ultimately placed it's central seat of power in Rome, hence the Roman Catholic Church. The word catholic is latin meaning universal and predates it's use in church language. Catholics believe the Apostle Peter was the first Pope but that was not his title, he was however, like the Pope is still referred to, the Bishop of Rome. Protestants love to pat themselves on the back with the Catholic Priest Martin Luther hammering his 95 thesis to that church door but the real radicals predate them by centuries when the eastern church split from Rome forming the Orthodox Church. They shared and continue to share much of the same beliefs of Roman Catholicism but chose to give the Pope the middle finger. Many more schisms and "reformations" would occur.

Judaism is essentially the Old Testament combined with other scholarly interpretations within the religion. They basically don't believe in a physical place called hell, it's more of an exclusion from the light of God. In spite of all the good things you hear evangelical Christian preachers say about protecting Israel and standing with them, it is not about protecting Jews, who are of course going to hell because they don't accept Jesus Christ as the messiah, they're still waiting for his arrival. The defense of Israel is about the preservation of the physical place itself because of it's religious significance of the past and it's role in the coming end of days and Christ's return.

Islam, the religion you dare not say much about even though we are assured of it's peaceful nature, was founded by Mohammed because Judaism and The Roman Catholic church refused to recognize him as a prophet, which he had asked them to do. So he launched his own religion. There is one God and his name is Allah. It has been one of the fastest growing religions in the world because of it's simplicity. It deals mostly with the rights of men and easy to follow. No alcohol and no fornication, which is not exclusive to Islam but if you make it to heaven you will never meet Allah because you are not worthy of that, but you will have all the alcohol you wish to consume and can fornicate for all of eternity. A word about the 72 virgins. Those virgins are eternal virgins, no matter how many times they are taken in carnal bliss they immediately return to being a virgin.

No one is born believing in god or anything else. You are a blank slate waiting to be written on by those around you and more likely than not you will adopt and mimic those behaviors. People fight about when life begins. Some say it's at conception, some say at birth, but both sides are wrong there are two times life begins. The first is when you form the word, why? The second is when you move out of your parents house. I started asking why at an early age, this probably surprises you.

I was raised Catholic and still remember Sunday School, the Catechism and my first communion. I remember kneeling in prayer and thinking to myself, this is really strange, who's listening. I remember confession and wondering why this little wooden telephone booth was so magical and straining to come up with a list of sins so I could be forgiven, which made no sense because I wasn't sorry. At around the age of thirteen you undergo Confirmation in the Catholic Church, this is a major sacrament. I managed to dodge it somehow. But at sixteen they caught up with me. A letter arrived for my parents from our local Parrish saying I needed to enroll in Confirmation class because I hadn't been Confirmed yet. My parents asked if I wanted to do it? I basically played it off and was non-committal, thus letting it dry up and blow away. What I didn't say was no I will not continue the charade that I believe any of this. At this point I seriously doubted the existence of god. When I was eighteen I considered becoming a Priest but in reality I realize that I was pushing hard into territory where I could have an in depth behind the curtain conversation. By my early twenties I was an atheist though I never said it out loud. I spent years of study and careful reflection before arriving at the solid conclusion there is no god and religion is a load of crap. Now let me offer a little surprise. When I was 34 I met with the Jesuits and considered joining them. By the way if you ever get the chance to argue with a Jesuit you should, they're wonderful folks. I didn't join because I ultimately felt my atheism would get in the way. I pause now to address those of you who are saying to yourself, oh you were confused, maybe you're not really an atheist. Wrong! Talking to a Jesuit is a great way to have a conversation about religion, everybody else mostly sucks and shuts down when you go near the subject.

Here are some dry facts, 74% of Americans say they believe in God, that's down slightly from 82%, 77% of Americans believe in Angels. Angels as in winged beings representing God, not metaphorical Angels but real ones!  Yet a large percentage of Americans believe Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S., definitely from the same focus groups.

There is no evidence that God exists. When you say this as an atheist you are immediately hit with the old standby, "it's about faith." Faith is belief absent of fact, which is ludicrous, you would not accept an absence of fact in any other area of your life. If there is a God requiring worship, where is he? Why does he not show himself? This collapses all religion because getting you to contribute your money and sit in their seats requires you to believe God needs worship, for what? If there is a being so powerful it can create the universe, what does it need from you?

How is the belief in one God anymore plausible than many gods? Yet such suggestions are blasphemy for the blind believer. Why is that? If I said I just returned from a Temple to Zeus and I'm hoping for favor, religious people would think, you're nuts! If I said I just got back from services at First Baptist and we're going to demonstrate against fags on Saturday, many would say yep, gotta do it, they're an abomination to our Lord and saviour. Which begs the question, if gay people aren't supposed to exist, why did God make them. If God makes mistakes then it's not infallible and why would you worship it? What's that you say? God didn't make them gay, they chose it? Really? Prove it. Oh, you can't, that's right, your beliefs are based on texts written by men thousands of years ago, who also said you can beat and rape your wife and sell your kids into slavery.

Morality has nothing to do with god or religion so arguments using that in favor of the beliefs are hollow and meaningless. Morality is a philosophical endeavor not a religious one.

If there is a solitary God that created human beings and our planet it did a very poor job and if it exists why wouldn't it fix all the problems it created. Why would it stand by and just let disease and war ravage it's creation? A god that could stand by and allow that is worthless and requires nothing but contempt. But there is no such thing and therefore requires no thought. Look up in the sky, what is that bright ball? It must be angry because it goes away everyday, let's sacrifice a virgin.