A is for Atheist

I don't believe in god and neither does Amanda.  I don't believe in the actual existence of god, Jesus, Yahweh, or Allah.  I give more leeway to polytheistic religions, Greek mythology, Hinduism, Incan mythology for example.  While Shiva, Zeus, and Pachamama do not exist in a literal sense, they are something that monotheistic gods are not, that is a useful and true way to describe nature and other human beings.  While the god of the Bible claims to be omnipotent and omniscient, the god Shiva represents destruction and the god Brahma represents creation.  In this way the god of the Bible is useless to describe forces in nature or in human nature that actually exist, but the religion of Hinduism describes the more ineffable elements of reality rather clearly.  Neither Shiva nor Brahma exist, but the concepts behind them do.

We don't believe in god because there is no reason to believe that any supernatural forces exist.  There is no evidence for their existence and the definitions of the metaphysical beings that people do believe in are contradictory in ways that make their impossibility easy to demonstrate in only a few sentences.  

I remember when I let go of believing in god.  I almost remember the day.  I was 16 years old, and I was at church.  It had been a long time coming, I realized when I was in 7th grade that when I prayed silently, I was talking to nothing.  I realized this but I wasn't ready to let go yet, it can be hard when you have an hour long class every day on the subject of religion with tests, and everyone you've ever met has been Catholic.  It stewed in me.  I tried to believe that the wafer at Mass was Jesus and concentrated on feeling different after I had consumed it, because if it really was Jesus I should feel differently after consuming it.  But I never felt anything, and when I did the feeling proved artificial on further examination.  First I admitted that Jesus wasn't the piece of bread, then I admitted that he wasn't god, then I admitted that there was no god.  The process took about three years.  And when I reached the last step, I began one of the happiest weeks of my life.  The whole world was new, guilt was transformed into joy.  Anything was possible, but evil was still evil and good was still good they were just slightly redefined.  I was able to completely develop a moral code that rested on what is actually moral and what is actually not.  Taking the "Lord's name" in vain or challenging authority was no longer wrong.  The only rule was to be good to others, to love, and to admit the truth of life regardless of how painful or unpopular it is, or its consequences.

There is no god, no one to tell you what's right and wrong, no being watching you from the sky, no hereafter, no sin, no salvation.  That has been my freedom, my joy.  I feel prouder to be an atheist than anything else that I am.  I'm happier as an atheist than I was before or could have been other wise.

So on this holiday season I'd like to take this opportunity to tell anyone who might happen upon this blog who has their doubts, but feels constrained by the ideas that have been fed them since early Childhood, who feels the weight of guilt or fear at their own ideas at what they know deep down inside like I did when I first started questioning, come out.  But come out intelligently, don't get kicked out of your house at 16 by telling your insane fundie parents that you don't believe.  If you're under 20, please play the game until you can keep yourself afloat.  After that, come out and let everyone know that you don't believe, you're not afraid, and you're still a good person.  There are always more of us around you than you think.