What is wrong with Atheists?

        I am an Atheist. In today’s society saying those words will, more often than not, make people think awful things. Atheists are the least trusted minority in America. In a recent Gallup poll Americans voted that they are least likely to elect an Atheist as president. I personally would like to see a president that has no religious affiliation and is open about it. Although, I am happy to see that seven of ten people would open minded enough to enough to elect a Gay or Lesbian president. Our leaders religious affiliation shouldn’t matter, neither should their gender or sexual preference. It is because of this closed-minded, ethnocentric thinking that our country is struggling, we worry more about the little things than we do about the actual intelligence level of our politicians.

            Another recent study by The University of British Colombia and The University of Oregon, detailed in an article on USA Today states that a majority of people believe Atheists to be less trust worthy than rapists. I don’t think I should have to point out the absurdity of this frame of mind. But, obviously, I am part of the minority and if people think I am less trustworthy than a rapist, then that will eventually cause some major problems in my life.

            Many people think this way because their pastors or other church leaders convince them of it. According to many different people like Heather Basher on Landover Baptist forums “All atheists believe in evolution, which means they don't believe in morality and think we should all act like animals.” She also states in the same post that “a lot of mass murderers were atheists, and all atheists, having no morality to guide them, are only a bad day away from going on a genocide spree. There have no exactly zero cases on Christian mass murderers throughout all of history.” First off I would like to point out that Ted Bundy was a mormon and a man named Burce Lee (no not THE Bruce Lee) killed twentysix people was a self proclaimed christian. And secondly, I would like to state that I do have morals. I argue that atheists, on the whole, are more moral than religious people. Atheists do not need promise of devine punishment to keep from killing, raping, or tortureing anybody. I refrain from doing these things because I feel personally that it is wrong. If the only thing keeping christians from going on a “genocide spree” is the fact that the will go to hell then there is something wrong with them, not me. I suggest you take the time and read the rest of her post, her views on the problems with Atheism are numerious and a perfect example of the ingorance that we deal with daily.

            Although, citizens can hardly be balmed for their hatred and bigotry. In August 1987 George Bush Sr said, “I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” He was trying to say that since he feels that our nation was founded on christian principles, non-christians have no place here. There are many problems with his statement. The first problem is that we are not “one nation under god” the phrase wasn’t even added to our Pledge of Allegence until 1954. The United States didn’t adopt the motto “in god we trust” intil 1956. Secondly, Most of our founding fathers were either Agnostic meaning they belive a higher power exsists but do not know which one or Deist which means they think there is a god, but he doesn’t interfere with man, they also didn’t believe the supernatural miricles in the bible and didn’t support the “trinity”. Some were even Atheists like Benjamen Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison. Our nation was founded by men who were trying to escape the religious oppression of the Church of England. They came here to find a freedom to worship or not worship how they wanted without fear of punishment. Once we decide that “Atheists aren’t citizens” we are destroying everything this country was founded for. The problem with people distrusting Atheists and saying the ignorant things they say is that it makes us out the be second class citizens. Most Atheists don’t want to fight with Christians, what you belive is entirely your choice and it has absolutely nothing to do with my life.

            Oh, and as far as “Atheists aren’t patriots” I would like to refer you to a picture that I found. It pretty much sums up how I feel.

In conclusion, what is wrong with Atheists? Nothing is wrong with us, we are human and therefore we have our own opinions. That doesn’t make us bad.

Religionless

I was started in church earlier then I can even remember. Every Sunday my mother would load my sister, brother, and I into the station wagon and take us to pick up our grandmother. We would then head out to a small Baptist church somewhere in Decatur, Georgia. I have vague memories of Sunday school and I seem to remember getting disciplined on more than one occasion for climbing in the church.

        After a few years my mom stopped taking us and we mostly just forgot about church in general. I didn’t start going to church again until I was in middle school, then I went to Zion Christian Fellowship in Lithia Springs. Church was a good escape from my home life and whenever things would get bad at home I would go to church. There I learned many things about the bible. I developed a close friendship with the pastor and his family.  I became a rather devout Christian for some time, but the more I learned about the bible and the more I watched the news and learned about the world I started to have questions. Why is God so cruel? Why in the bible did God turn Lot’s wife to a pillar of salt simply for looking back towards home? How did God make light before he made a light source? Why did he need to send Jesus to die for our sins? If he were truly all powerful could he not simply forgive us?

Image from: Think That Through

         By high school I started to learn the theory of evolution and saw how it contradicted the creation story in Genesis. And it occurred to me, if one part of this book is untrue than the book as a whole loses credit as being fact. It was then that I decided to look into other religions. I spent much of the next couple of years looking into different religions, my mother works at a book distributor so this made it easy for me to have fairly unlimited access to many religious texts. For a short time in tenth grade I started a “coven” with a few other friends from school, we really didn’t do anything but draw pentagrams on all of our stuff, dress in all black, and read a lot of books on witch craft. I looked briefly into the Necronomicon which is a book on summoning the dead, but couldn’t take it seriously. All these things had one major flaw in common. They all had a creation stories or similar stories that contradicted known scientific facts. Buddhism, in my opinion, is the only contradiction to the previous statement. A quote from Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama says "if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims." I wish all religions would be so reasonable, but I will talk more about Buddhism in a later post.

        It was at this point that I turned my attention and efforts to my science book. I found an abundance of answers to nearly all my questions. Why is the universe so big? Where did it all come from? Which came first the chicken or the egg? How can there be life and beauty without god/ gods? It was only after much study and debate that today I confidently call myself an Atheist. I honestly do not believe that any gods exist; we are here through random chance. The fact that there is no god does not make life any less beautiful or meaningful. In fact I think it makes life more important, we don’t need to focus on what we imagine will happen to our “spirit” when we die. We need to focus on living the only life we will ever get and make the most of it. Not believing in god does not make me immoral either, I chose to be good because it is the right thing to do, not because I think I will be punished for all eternity. I don’t however think that other people should have to give up their religions, some people need a coping mechanism to keep them happy until such a time as their heart stops, their brain turns off and they go into the ground forever. Because once someone is dead, they will never know if they were wrong.