Skip to main content

Why Not Try Atheism?

By Carl S ~

Many are raised in Catholicism and become Evangelicals or Episcopalians or whatever. Some in other sects came to “accept Jesus” while most are merely warm to him. Others of various sects became convinced and/or rabid Christians; most remain moderate. (I knew a man who changed from Lutheran to Christian Scientist to Methodist, and he was still in his 50's.) One Supreme Court judge described “Experience and Feeling as the Ultimate Ground of the Christian faith.” That's it? Wow. Doesn't that description fit every religion, and even schizophrenia?

Many people switch sects just like they switch jobs. Many believers toy with astrology, Buddhism, dogmatic patchwork-faith-combinations, exotic methods of mindfulness, etc. What about you, what else is there? Why not try atheism? Go ahead and live a secret life for awhile. Does the thought scare you? Apparently, pedophile priests, their supporters, and leading clergy of any religions aren't scared of being punished by their God, and they claim to be privy to his thoughts. Even if you're confused about or bored with Christianity, get out of the rut. You're in for an adventure.

Maybe you hadn't thought about this: according to Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), most people live like atheists. They don't think about gods or supernatural matters or invoke them as they go about living their lives day by day. If you're a normal person, you're already on atheism's road, traveling along. Unlike religious systems, atheism doesn't require adopting incredible, conflicting, or nonsensical beliefs.

So stop going to church. If family, friends, or neighbors greet you with, “I haven't seen you in church lately,” that might tell you why you went there: social expectations, your standing in the community, fear of ostracism, and not thinking about the fact you were going through the motions, etc. Stop contributing your money. You're likely to hear from the pastor and elders about that. Stop praying and see what happens. Will your life be any different, will you be better or worse off? Will you be any different yourself, like ah, will you become bitter, hard-assed, immoral or less loving? Of course not. And when you're free to live outside the fold, you can objectively look at those within to see if they are better or worse off than you. That alone is an improvement, just being outside the compound.

“Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.” Now you're free to read all the forbidden material and to question why it should ever had been forbidden. You're free to do this without fear of being executed, tortured, and imprisoned. Just think. The fact you can do this is a wide-open opportunity to discover just what has been hidden for two thousand years and more! Lucky you. Why is God afraid of scrutiny? Where's the threat to an almighty being in that? If you’re doubting there's a “God,” you might look at what's said about “him.” He demanded the death penalty for anyone caught looking behind the curtain and seeing little men operating the levers. You see his agents have been passing off “alternative facts” and “fake news” for centuries. They don't want you prying and questioning to find the real facts. His agents are afraid of that, and rightly so. You might find yourself asking about things you should have taken seriously. For example: Why there are those who do evil because they believe by doing evil they are doing good.

Try using a system devised by the “God” sales agents of early Christianity: They would test the other traditional gods and use those gods' failures to pass the tests as proof of their non-existence. According to their writings (which are hearsay), the other gods failed, and only their “God” passed the tests. They claimed that every single time this happened proved their god is the true one, and, they said, of course everyone accepted him. Interesting. Their “tests and proofs” were the same ones for all the gods. And yet, their followers tell you “We should not test God!” Try their method for yourself. Hold this same “God' up to scrutiny, too. Keep score of all your answered and unanswered prayers to this god, and, by the way, check to see if miracles attributed to him have any other explanation. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The great Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote, “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.” To focus on one part of this, let's just say the God of Abraham and Mohammed and Jesus does not believe in prevention. And anyone who can see evil coming, can prevent it, and does not, billions of times every day, is just useless, and might as well not exist. I am reminded of this every time I see a news report about a “missing child,” whose body is later found. I think of the millions of prayers said with profound hope that that child will be safely returned to its already emotionally tortured parents. Thinking about the rapes and murders of so many of those children makes me sick with grief. Anyone who would allow this to go on repeatedly is the ultimate sadist. As a Christian, you were taught to worship this same god - a sadist who also drowns children (in the Great Flood) while he watches their parents desperately try to save them, even sacrificing their lives for them. And you accepted he was moral?

All this time, living as an atheist has been referred to as a casting off, of unburdening, discovering mind-liberating writings banned for ages, and finding out why so many good people have been persecuted for even suggesting one should go wherever their questioning leads. And isn't the room with the most information the one most likely to contain the truth? Religions are a way to avoid or excuse personal responsibility, and humans can become very addicted to that. “God” will forgive that, and people like this release. On the other hand, without gods in the way, the personal choice of leaping into reality-based discoveries and making responsible decisions can become its own oft-repeating satisfaction. Give atheism a try. Dare to doubt.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not