Atheism

I’m not a proud atheist but I’m also not ashamed of it. I don’t wear my atheism as a badge of honour but I do like to use it to argue and discuss with religious people about real issues like life, the existence of the universe & human morality. I don’t oppose religion, anyone can believe anything they like. But I like a discussion and atheism offers an alternative view. I suppose it’s the balance that asks questions like: Why does God hate gay people? Why are women seen as less than men? Is death a suitable punishment for Earthly crimes? Is terrorism ever justified in the name of a God or Gods? etc, etc. Below is a short essay I wrote about atheism. Now what ever your faith, peace be with you and be nice to one another. It’ll make your God smile and that’s good aint it? Peace!

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Some people argue that when you don’t believe in God you fall for anything. It’s like saying “when you have no God you don’t believe in nothing but you believe in anything.” This is certainly not true. The idea that God does not want to know you as a human because you are Catholic and he’s a Hindu God (from a Hindu point of view and vice versa) is stupid. It’s even more stupid if God actually does not exist, which is more plausible.

Atheism is a natural path that humanity will walk over the coming thousand years as a result of our continuous intellectual growth and as we grow as a species we’ll come to accept that our differences should not be things that separate us or pigeon hole us, but unite us as one fascinating and amazing genus of life form. Cultural, religions and ethnic differences are not only things we will have to learn to accept they are things that we should also celebrate at least until we evolve beyond them to a state of global atheism. If you had to make a list of the pro’s and cons of “being human” culture in the form of art, music and literature are definitely things that would get a great big tick in the pro’s column – but not religious division. Plus when we accept that black and white are only colours and religious faith is no more than that – a person’s faith, we will all learn to get along together. For example if you liked the colour red and believed so strongly that it was the greatest colour would you really hate someone who felt blue was actually the greatest colour of all time? No of course not, if you did you would be considered crazy.

But religion, as has been proved over the 2000 year long case study that humanity has conducted itself in a global, social setting, has proven that it has failed. Religion divides people all around the world. We have seen it in places like Pakistan-India, Chechnya-Russia, Britain-Eire, Moderate and Radical conflicts in Iranian society, Iraqi society, Taliban-Afghanistan and its allies etc, etc. Without religion you would have no September 11^th, you’d have no war on terror, no Taliban, no Iraq war, no Afghan war, no Chechen conflict, now Moscow siege, no Beslan… do you see where I’m going with this?

Now I speak as someone who grew up in a world with a God. We never went to church as a family but certainly no-one considered themselves atheist, even I was a God botherer of sorts. I went to a Catholic secondary school and had that religion to contend with alongside my education. This time in my life proved to me the divisions that religion causes – as a protestant in a catholic school I certainly felt a little bit excluded and different. I never had or have a problem with organised religion, I just don’t expect someone else’s views to be thrust at me, I don’t want to be told I’m going to hell – because I don’t care. You might as well tell me I’ll end up in Narnia if I delve deep enough into the wardrobe.

I feel secular beliefs are better and safer for all people. Secular governments allow the practise of any religion, they don’t have any particular leanings towards Islam or Christianity or Judaism etc. They just want people to be free to do what they want… and pay lots and lots of taxes. Another good thing about secularism is that it opposes in principal the idea of faith schools. These are essentially places for indoctrinating people to a certain way of thinking. Yes we hear on the news about how Madrasah’s in Pakistan are used to teach radical Islam, but what we forget is that the same is happening in Christian schools too. We teach people that not only does a particular God exist but he’s the righteous one and all of the other faiths are false and wrong. What a lot of horse shit. Would you send your kids to a school that taught them that supporting Manchester United was the right path to take and any other was wrong? Would you want your son learning misogyny from a sexist themed education system? No of course not, that is just ludicrous, but we accept the idea of faith schools without question.

But like any pigeon hole, Atheism can have its bad elements. There are some people who believe that atheism should conduct itself like a religion, with its own rules that should be followed, thus turning it into a belief system, and therefore erasing the very meaning of atheism. These people, despite being atheist and well meaning, are wrong to think that way. The beauty of atheism is individual belief that God is nothing, because he doesn’t exist. All atheists have slightly different views. Some say there is no God… end of discussion. Others say, I don’t believe there is a God, he may exist, but I don’t have any faith, and of course you get the light hearted atheists who say things like, “If God exists, why did he make me an atheist?” We atheists are all different and we cannot have a set of rules. That is just ridiculous.

At the end of the day these are all my opinions, I feel they are well informed and sensible, you may disagree and that is fair enough. We all have brains, we should use them. Don’t accept what you are told by the media, the church, your employers, your colleagues, your economist or accountant, or the internet. People can have agenda’s and tell you what they want you to hear. Free your thoughts, question things, make up your own mind. If you still believe in God after looking at the facts for yourself, then you truly are a believer… and I respect that completely. The problem is of course in this entire debate is we are human. We will still find a way to disagree, argue, fight and fall out, if it’s not religion, it’ll be race, or sexuality or misogyny, or the fact that someone is fat, or an alcoholic, or a drug user. The real problem is that the world has a lot more idiots in it than enlightened, intelligent people who look at the facts. Too many people are lead not leaders. They read the Daily Mail and shake their fists at made up bullshit headlines. It’s like that scene from Extra’s, “Suicide bombers get lotto funding” or “gypsies are eating our pets” Morons soak this stuff up, absorb it into their brains, and take it as fact with no idea of the truth, only a journalist’s point of view. Journalists sell papers, they aren’t in the business of facts; they are in the business of sensation, gossip and hearsay. People accept God because they are told he’s watching over them. They don’t question it, consider, ponder or wonder about where we really came from. They struggle to get their heads around the idea that they came from a random series of events and chemical reactions that created life that slowly evolved into the environment it found itself in; and thus leading to us. That, for the morons, is too unlikely – it makes more sense to these people that an invisible being that cannot be comprehended by man created the Heavens and the Earth in six days and then he rested.

He can rest for ever now. I lost my faith in him years ago. In my opinion and that’s all this is, he can rest in peace. Amen to that.