recently it became almost impossible to keep all of the strangers away while still letting friends and family members stay current on the happenings of me. so i gave up. now the sarcastic comments, preachy posts, and assorted ramblings are being noticed by a much larger audience than i had planned. as we all know, the Internet is a place where your audience has no patience for being silent. questions and comments abound.
one question stands out. "why don't you believe in god".
i only know one place to start with that. another question "why DO you believe in god?". you know what answers i don't want? i don't want bad ones like "because i can feel him" or "because the bible tells me so". i want a real rock solid reason why. just like the one i am going to try and give you.
so yeah, i don't believe in god. there was no tragedy that made me mad at him. no awakening. nothing instant. it almost makes me giggle that people think that believing in a supernatural power should be the standard and that anything different is unusual and warrants an explanation. Instead for me it was just an ever growing laundry list of things that made it all silly and ignorant and eventually phased out. I don't want to spend forever typing so i will just toss out a few things. again, these are just some. these are not necessarily the compiled few that helped me change my mind... just some that keep it changed.
one of the most fun to me is the misfortune of Galileo. Galileo invented the telescope. using the telescope he could confirm Copernican theory that the universe did not revolve around the earth and that in fact, the earth revolved around the sun. others before him were burnt to death by the catholic church for such claims. Luckily Galileo got off with just house arrest after being forced by threat of torture to say that the earth was the center of the universe by the church court. the church. Good news, the Vatican finally pardoned Galileo in 1992. i bet he is relieved.
if you think about that a little differently than just a brief part of a well documented life, you might see something else....
because of a lack of understanding about how things in the world and even further, the universe work... an idea was "made up". earth at the center. i wonder what the people who decided that the earth was at the center made up about other things. common sense and basic logic would have to leave any thinking person to draw the conclusion that before the ability to draw scientific and fact based conclusions all conclusions are made up.
honestly that right there should be the end of it. why don't i believe in god? because i can't subscribe to the conclusions drawn by people who had no clue. you wont accept that as an answer though will you?
another point. study of other religions and beliefs in other deities. if i showed you a super duper awesome picture that i drew on a piece of tracing paper... would you think it was awesome or would you kinda look at me silly and think "dude, its not that special if you just copied it". well, simply put, multiple religions, namely the concept of Jesus as the Christ and even the birth and childhood of Moses are full on copies of many now disavowed deities from civilizations before. well, after learning so much about past beliefs i kinda look at the tracing paper that is Christianity and go "dude, its not that special since you just copied it". if its broken down as just a copy then we can also refer to the wonderful little atheist quip "i just believe in one less god than you". you see, over time there have been thousands of gods created to explain why and how we are all here. though most are similar i would assume that most people only believe in one... that they disregard all of the others as false. atheists do the exact same thing but just once more than everyone else.
Horus. The OG Jesus.
archeology. dinosaurs, neanderthal man, homo erectus. carbon dating. i will start with dinosaurs. said simply enough.... the story tellers of the bible can remember a dude walking on water but not gigantic reptiles the size of yachts running around biting the heads off of everything they see or birds the size of planes? oh wait, they must have been included in the few days of existence before man was created. you know, the god sized day. the one that is conveniently thought to be of an undetermined length of time despite it clearly saying day much like all of the other times the bible says day and means the typical cycle of day and night. maybe the Hebrew word they used for day in creation means undetermined length of time... check that for me. some people believe that dinosaurs were on the arc, some think that the bones were just placed by god as a test of faith. i say this to you, isn't believing in an all powerful creator that there is no real sign of other than some ancient text enough of a test of faith?
neanderthal and java man. how can you seriously look at the remains found of all prehistoric man and not believe in evolution? unless these bones are all a hoax then one would have to assume that creation as we know it is BS or that Adam and eve were prehistoric and certainly not the type to sit and have intelligent conversation with god or talking serpents about right and wrong.
carbon dating.... this place is old. really old. way older than the bible claims. unless we default back to that god sized day. which in its defense, if he is the creator of the universe he wouldn't have a day the same size as us because he doesn't live on earth. to think of it, would he even have a day? no, not unless he lived somewhere with a rotation. so really, the god day doesn't exist and he couldn't have worked for 6 of them and then rested. but back to the point... other than this god day, the bible indirectly states (through ages of men) that the earth is around 6000 years old. no way, Jose.
to reinforce my earlier statement... before they had a way to research and discover the way that we do, ancient people just fabricated a beginning to all of this. they didn't have the resources that we do now to find evidence to answer life's big questions. they couldn't possibly determine that we evolved and they couldn't possibly discover that there were dinosaurs before man or even man before man. there was no easy way of finding out about the universe and its size and age. they wanted answers just like we do, so they made them up or hypothesized. the funny part about that to me, the god hypothesis is widely believe despite no evidence, but the celestial teapot.... no one seems to buy into. why?
lets not forget the the constant wrong translations (virgin birth) and contradictions. god is love, there is no love in fear, fear god. how about the idea that god wants us to try and be like him... but he is kinda angry and jealous... neither of which we should be. day and night were created before sun and moon and that the moon gives off light instead of reflecting it. this is another topic that i could spend way way too long on so i will just post a picture that is a link. you should click this image and then check out the larger zoom-able pdf so that you can actually read it. it points out actual contradictions in the bible instead of the ones paraphrased off the top of my head.
at the end of the day, its just basic thought and the facts before us that make me an atheist. i was a born again christian and was raised in a christian house hold. even now as an atheist, i miss the companionship of a god. i see the advantages of believing. i just cant possibly let go of what makes sense in order to have faith in something that an uninformed people dreamed up. i cant use a book that has no historical or scientific support as a guidebook for life and i most certainly cant take it literally. that's the issue with the bible too, if you cant take it literally.... then you cant take it at all. some people assume that atheists decide not to believe because it gets them a free pass to be selfish and do whatever they want. some assume that without a god, there are no morals. that's just sad. there isn't a day that i wake up that i don't think about my belief. i know that this one life is all that i have and i better make it good. i better treat people the way they want to be treated and do the best i can to make humanity more enjoyable during the short time we are here.
i know i stuck to Christianity in this blog but can you blame me? its the majority belief in my country. had i been born in India as a Hindu, i would have spent more time on that, in the middle-east as a Muslim, i would have spent more time on that. also, i dont believe in ghosts or spirits or reincarnation.
4 comments:
Great post Bryan. It's nice to see other peoples reasons for not believing in god...I could leave my reasoning here but I don't want to fill up your comment section lol.
THANKYOU! So good to hear somebody speaking sense. Admittedly I was raised entirely non religiously in an almost secular society (I've honestly only known about 3 people during my lifetime who actually go to church) - but I just find it impossible to comprehend how people can believe in this stuff. To me it is as incomprehensible as ghosts and magic; I'm sure to some people it is very important, but to me it's just baffling. Like carrying a security blanket around into adulthood.
Interesting read....now you have me all confused...thought I was sure of my beliefs, now you have me questioning..I like the part at the end about who you are..the term "atheist" can seem cold:o) Do you and your sister have endless conversations on this subject? I will admit that I saw her name on a comment or something and clicked on her blog and got caught up for hrs reading it one night! I was going through a difficult time and felt I could relate to her on some level, she's a strong woman:)
I hope, as a stranger to your blog, that you won't be displeased by my comments. I only wish to leave my thoughts in your care for you to do with as you see fit.
This was an interesting read for me. I applaud your stance on punctuation. I usually avoid it in personal communications but, for me, it sometimes artfully affects the written word in a positive way.
As chance would have it, art is the nominal topic of my reply. Your defenses of atheism seem to rely heavily upon a "burden of proof". That is to say, you speak of carbon dating, biblical contradictions, translation errors, etc. as reasons to choose not to believe in a God. These are all applications of reason and are very true insomuch as you believe in the evidence.
So where does the art come in? Art, as I see it, represents a method of thought that exists independent of reason. It is not art that I speak of so much as passion. Whereas reason comes from the mind, passion comes from the heart.
I do not doubt that reason has had a significant influence on your present position on the state of affairs in the universe. But I must question the vehemence with which you have applied your heart in the matter. I think we apply our minds too often when we should consider the urgings of our hearts.
With my closing, I would like to address your stated view of morality. What drives you to "make humanity more enjoyable"? What could compel a man in a godless world to such convictions? I do not know. But in a world with a loving God, how can such convictions not exist?
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