Atheism

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5479410612081345878
This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Watch it, it’s hilarious. Don’t you love stupid people? I do too. They way they attempt to completely make up evidence… Talk about egotistical bigots.
I’ve never really believed in a god. Every night, my mother would read to me from The Children’s Bible, and the only reason I put up with it was because she’d follow up with part of Harry Potter. By the time I was ten, I could recite the Lord’s Prayer at super speed and use biblical passages to disprove their own theories.
Yes, theories. Think about it: what do we call the Greco-Roman religions (and other religions in which no one really believes any more)? Myths. A bunch of stories they made up to explain how the universe works, because they hadn’t the evidence to use cold hard fact.
So what is modern theism but myths? Science is based on fact. There are numbers and observations and proof and common sense. Where is that in religion? A guy parted a sea made red with the blood of killed firstborns- right. Because such an all-loving god would kill off innocent kids because one single guy wouldn’t do what he wanted. And do you have any idea how much blood it would take to dye the entire sea? A lot, that’s how much. Sure, it’s a great story (good triumphs over evil, etc.), but it’s completely different if you believe it is fact.
As long as people think of the stories of the Bible as moral guidelines, it’s okay. But believing it really happened is- dare I say it?- idiotic. And believing there really is an omnipresent, omniscient being running the show makes no sense either. After all, if there is one, why hasn’t He turned me into a pillar of salt or something like that? I’m a liar, a blasphemer, a downright sinner. I admit it and I’m proud of it, so why haven’t I been punished? Yes, I know, I’ll be sent to Hell, yadda, yadda, yadda, but in that case, I’ll hardly be alone. If everyone who sinned went to Hell, then there’s no point in even furnishing Heaven.
Religion is a set of beliefs about the metaphysical, about some higher power. A lot of the time, it’s taught to you from birth, so you get brainwashed during your most formative years and can believe in nothing else. It takes a strong, rational mind to break away from this dependence on something that you have no evidence of existing. I was lucky, because even though I was told there was a god by my mother, my dad’s a skeptic, and Mom’s church is Unitarian Universalist, which is essentially codename for “let’s all be nice to each other, no matter what we believe!” So my brainwashing was far from being nearly as complete as others’.
But back to what religion is.
It is what someone believes. If you believe every word in that little book you find in hotel room drawers in true, then that’s the foundation for your religion. (Note that I still mean beliefs about the metaphysical, and not about whether the Sox or the Yankees are a better baseball team. I am so not gonna get into that here.)
Atheism, therefore, is the belief that there is no higher power, that science can explain how the universe was created. And if you say, “Oh, but what are the odds that this universe would be created with exactly the necessary properties for us to exist?”, then let me tell you this: if the odds hadn’t worked out, then we wouldn’t exist and thus would not be having this debate, now would we? No, I didn’t think so.
I’m also not saying science is a religion. It’s not a set of beliefs, it’s a set of provable facts. People who think some of these facts (aka evolution) are wrong should probably get their brains checked out. We have the fossils. We win.
Atheism is not worship of science. Atheists do not worship, nor are we amoral or evil. We just don’t need a guy in a funny robe to tell us our morals. We have souls, we have hearts, we care. We just don’t think there’s any reason to kill our knees and waste time that could be spent doing something worthwhile to pray to something that we say isn’t even there.
And FYI- just because atheists can also be termed “secular humanists”- which is sort of the PC way of putting us- does not mean we worship humans or crap like that. We do not worship anything. No little sculptures of a dude on a cross, no invisible, nonexistent “presence”, nada.
As for agnostics- they are not people who do not know if there’s a god or not, contrary to banana boy’s statement. (Didn’t I tell you to follow the link?) They are people either too lazy to decide what they believe or people too wimpy to fess up that they follow a non-mainstream religion, such as atheism.
Honestly, I think religion is okay, as long as people don’t live their entire lives trying to “save” others. Take that bishop dude in Les Miserables: very religious, yes, but he didn’t tell Jean Valjean to repent and confess and all would be forgiven, he gave him a couple of candlesticks and told him to turn his life around. If people could just understand that it’s not how hard you worship but how you live your life that makes you a good or evil person, then religious differences would matter so much less. After all, the people who led the Inquisition killed innocents just because they were born into a different religion. Does murder, even in the name of God make you a good person? Not in my book, on my list of morals.
And I do have one, you know. There are certain givens for me, albeit plenty of room for debate. No one else told me what they are, nor do I use its name to commit amoral things.

1. Don’t steal crap from people. It’s a jerky thing to do.
2. Only sleep around if you want to get knocked up or father an unwanted child and/or get a bunch of STIs.
3. Sex before marriage isn’t some terrible sin. Just be careful about it.
4. Don’t lie and/or cheat when it matters. Ten point homework assignments don’t matter.
5. Never kill in cold blood (self-defense is another story).
6. Revenge might feel good, but sometimes it’s time to just move on.
7. There are better ways to feel good than getting high. Better things for your body, too.
8. Never drink and drive (more like common sense, really). In my case, I don’t get drunk because I have a fear that something will happen that I won’t be able to remember. But if you want to get drunk, have someone like me around to hold your hair back when you commune with the toilet.
9. Don’t cheat in relationships. Ever. I don’t mean don’t look at other people, just don’t do anything about any sexual thoughts you have about someone while in a relationship. Break it off first, if it’s too strong.
10. And of course, the Golden Rule. There’s a variation of it in every religion, so of course it’s in atheism: Don’t be a prat. It’s annoying.

Thought for the day: Maybe Bobby Henderson was right all along, and we really were created by a drunken Flying Spaghetti Monster and lack of pirates cause global warming. Hey, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than spontaneously combusting bushes.

Signed,
Two of Wands