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A Word or Two


You mean you don’t believe in god?

Nope. I don’t believe in any of that.

How can you not believe in something?

It just doesn’t make sense to.

Aren’t you afraid you’re going to Hell?

Sigh. No, I don’t believe in Hell either.

Thats right folks, I’m an atheist (insert ghost noise here)–which means that if God didn’t make the world and heavens, then man made up god and religion should be filled with human errors. How could a perfect god’s religion have imperfections in it? Because that god isn’t real.

Some of the things I’m going to say don’t apply to all Christians. I guess that means they aren’t true Christians then. It seems that some of the very things God would have us do, are in fact blasphemous.

God didn’t make a mistake. He is the mistake.

I could probably focus on written errors, but I didn’t bother reading the thing. I focus more on conceptual errors, and simple ideas.
Like praying. Any notion that prayer will, in fact, change God’s plan and work to your favor would be to admit that he isn’t omniscient. If praying has no effect then its pointless. Or maybe it does have an effect, but it doesn’t change his mind because he knew ahead of time. He knew whether we would pray or not, and what would be prayed.

This is a good way to cover all bases. But this means that when two men (both belonging to the true branch of Christianity) are sick, and their wives pray to God to save them, and both men die, that God–knowing ahead of time that these women prayed with all their hearts–deliberately chose not to do anything about it. This means either that God doesn’t care if we pray, or that he is unable to do anything about it. If he did, then almost no one would ever die. (Still, why would anyone want God to delay their loved one’s entry into a perfect afterlife?)

But its all God’s plan. Your father dying on a plane is God’s plan. Your friend getting sick is God’s plan. Praying for your friend to get better is basically saying “Yes God, I worship you and trust your decision but I want him to live, regardless of your plan.” Praying is kind of like asking for God to make it your way. Not to mention–it doesn’t work.

Two teams play each other. Both pray. One wins. One loses. Which is the exact same ratio as teams that don’t pray. Praying is an idea supported by God, yet he contradicts himself. When you think about it, this isn’t a God who’s perfect. This is a God who is supposed to be perfect, but falls short.

You’re told that you should pray for your friends. Pray for the “lost ones” so they can get into heaven. So that you might be united in heaven after you die. Why worry about being united when heaven is supposed to be perfect anyway? Heaven won’t suffer if I’m not there. But God doesn’t think about that. Rather, the men who made him didn’t think about it. So stop preaching.

They didn’t think about hell either. Here they made one of their biggest mistakes. If someone were to say, “A man has killed your friend. Do you want that man to die?” I would probably say, “Yes.” If you were to ask, “Do you want him to suffer endlessly for the rest of eternity?” I would say, “No.” After a year of the person screaming in pain, body squirming in agony, I would feel pity and say it was more than enough. I think the average person would say it was enough, too. What is being caned next to a year of unrelenting pain? This tells me that the average man is more merciful than an “merciful” god.

To get into heaven you must worship and love God, correct? To this I say, “Helen Keller.” Thats right. Until her, people born deaf and blind wouldn’t know about God. There would be no way for them to know. They would go to hell for a disability God gave them. A baby dying immediately after being born would go to hell because it hadn’t accepted Christ into its heart. What about everyone born before God introduced his religion? Hell. We could raise a person in a room, never allowing any sort of human contact. That person wouldn’t be able to think like anything except an animal–much less worship a God. That person would go to hell. What about the insane? A religion isn’t perfect when I could send someone else to hell, regardless of what they do. Its flawed.

Our God is an awesome God; He reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power, and love. Our God is an awesome God!

…unless he made you blind and deaf, in which case you’re going straight to the hot place.

His religion isn’t really that perfect either. I could do better. How about that when you die, you might go to hell only temporarily? Then God would sit down with you and show you the error of your ways. If psychology can help the insane, imagine what God could do with a serial killer! God would teach him what he never got here. He would eventually join us in heaven and all would be fair. Children who die too young to learn Christianity would be reborn so they could learn, so they could become people before being sent to the hellfire. Their evil would be punished and then they would be shown what is right. But this perfect, forgiving God that we have been taught has a far more savage and unfair way of doing things.

I believe in evolution. Some churches support it, some don’t. How any church could is beyond me! Why would animals change over millions of years? Didn’t God make them right to begin with? What about man? Give us a million years and we aren’t going to look at all like we do now. How, then, could we be made in God’s image?. You might say, “There is no such thing as evolution. Nothing is changing over millions of years. God got it right the first time.” If there isn’t such a thing as evolution and we all came from Adam and Eve, where did black people come from?

I guess we atheists are a strange and misguided bunch. So misguided that I could devote my life to doing exactly what Christians think of as good, but not worship and yet think its unfair that I get an eternity of pain. How strange of me! How immoral!

A survey conducted by the Roper Organization found that behavior deteriorated after “born-again” experiences. While only 4% of respondents said they had driven intoxicated before being “born again,” 12% had done so after conversion. Similarly, 5% had used illegal drugs before conversion, 9% after. Two percent admitted to engaging in illicit sex before salvation, 5% after.

It’s been said that Christians have much happier and comforting lives than atheists. I doubt this, but perhaps it’s a fact that we choose truth over comfort, reason over delusion, fact over fantasy. Perhaps we don’t have the straightforward direction that believers do.

I like to indulge myself in many things. I like books and movies more than the average person. I prefer fantasy and science fiction. I have lots of books and make lots of drawings and sculptures. You might say that I’m trying to replace religion with a fantasy world. But you have to see the subtle humor of a theist criticizing an atheist for spending too much time thinking about fiction.

You might say that you believe because of faith. There are lots of church organizations called “faith.” Faith isn’t your reason for believing, it only says you have no reason for believing. I think the names should be changed to “hope.” Your hope has made it this far only because there wasn’t any other explanation. A plague is obviously a punishment from God until you learn that its spread from animal to animal by something called “germs.”

I consider theism to be a attribute of a primitive society. I hope we get past it. I hope we evolve past it. It explained a few things when man was fighting with swords and armor. But we can explain many more things by ourselves now. We can’t yet explain where the universe came from. But 2000 years ago they couldn’t explain what the sun is. Give us time. We’ll figure it out. I’ll accept my ignorance before I jump to superstition.

“God works in mysterious ways” is Christian for “Gee, that doesn’t make much sense to me either.”