I just find I don't believe in God. It just doesn't seem to be true, and no amount of thinking about it seems to make it true. It seems inherently untrue. And the thing that's hard about honing that position is, as a reporter, I've seen many times how a belief in God has transformed somebody's life. In all the ways I feel like you can witness God's work here on earth, I feel like I've seen that. I've met a lot of people -- it's been the thing that's changed them, that's sustained them in a way that I wish I could believe. But I simply find I don't and I don't feel like it's something I have a choice about. I could pretend I believe a God exists, but the world seems explainable to me without it.
I remember, even when I was growing up a little kid, it all seemed, especially the Christian version -- arbitrary. That the entire universe would be created, and the system that was set up was: you could actually lead a perfectly good life, and a life organized around good deeds and caring for others, and yet if you simply didn't accept Jesus himself, the Creator of the Universe would feel so vengeful about it that you'd be condemned to an eternity of torture. It just seemed like a really weird system. Like what difference would it make to the Creator of Everything? The whole thing seemed really arbitrary. Even as a kid, I felt like, "Well, if that's the system: fine. I accept my damnation. I don't think it's a fair system. But fine." I just don't believe.
Hey Atheist Preacher. My name is Tim Pate, and I am the creator of "An Elephant in the Room, An Atheist in the Church," a blog originally created on Tumblr but which has recently been moved to Blogspot. I really wanted the domain atheistinchurch.blogspot.com (my Tumblr domain is atheistinchurch.tumblr.com), and I noticed that you haven't used this domain in quite some time. I was wondering if you would be willing to give me the domain. I would really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Tim
P.S. Check out atheist-elephant.blogspot.com to see what I've created.
It seems to me that what Ira Glass is softly, compassionately suggesting is that some dictum asserting power in the personal life{through what could be determined with science} in the form of either "ancient fibs" or, perhaps ignorance, contains some sense of legitimate truth. I am not one to personally accept the "theist" approach to life, and also will never find myself sponsoring the actions and qualities of the church, or any organized religion. Though this may appear to be only the approach of a "cynic", according to rudimentary thinkers, it is actually not this at all; it is what "reason through science" has provided me so far, and the probability of what it will provide in the shape of cosmic knowledge later. My atheism is not based on anything finite, as it is impossible to prove the existence of god. My atheism is based on likelihood and sheer probability. I, personally, cannot cheat my own thinking by interpreting any sense of higher being achieved through religious dogma is somehow "awe inspiring" and that there is something to be learned of there efforts. Psychology is not Divinity, and I am not a pawn in some heavenly show. I think if a god had any chance of affirmation from mankind universally, he would have prevented the holocaust. If he wanted his deification to have any redeemable quality, he clearly would have put it out there. Therefore "God is Dead" creates a great deception as well. God is not dead, he never was.
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