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"Okay, it's VERY difficult
to imagine you EVER having been a right-wing fundy. :-)"
Mebbe so, but it's true. I think it does give me some advantages when it
comes to understanding the Xian way of looking at things, and why the
results of that are wrong. It is from arguing with myself, and knowing
it's what I found lacking in the religious "truth" and what I found
convincing among all of the alternatives, and the horror of realizing
the differences, that drives me now.
Let
me explain something to you: Right at the outset, in the privacy of the
fields and woods in which I wandered as a teenager, I made a pact with
God. I have no idea of anything from God's side of the pact, but I did
not get struck down, and I did feel the confidence to go on with my part
of it, knowing that if God had full knowledge of everything past,
present and future, that if God knew our thoughts and intentions and all
our secretmost deeds like I had been told time and again, and that if
God had the power to do anything it wanted no matter how impossible,
that He, She or It would know exactly what would be needed to convince
me, once and for all, of whatever would be the ultimate truth among all
the conflicting claims and directives of religion. Most important of
all, god would know full well what were my intentions, and would somehow
stop me if they were wrong. Yeah, I know, long sentence, but it covers
more than half a century of what I took to be the purpose of my life,
right or wrong.
So,
I can say with utmost seriousness that God called me to be an atheist.
However much I hated a lot of what I started learning, I accepted it and
adopted it until I could discover something better. I learned that by
doing so, I could find my way to better truths, and that I would
understand them from having experienced what arrived before them. Truth
may, itself, be but a fiction, but the longer I chased after it, the
less effect religion had in my life, and the more effect the absence of
it. The difference is profound for me. The more I learned, the less I
knew and the more I knew that.
Sounds like trite bullshit, right? Maybe to most, who doubt with all
their heart that one person could raise himself up in the world and make
the demand, "I want to know what from all the arguments and books and
tales without end, no matter what, is true," and make a promise,
"Whatever it is, I will live by that." Toward that end, I read
everything I could find and find time for, about religion, philosophy,
psychology and science. A lot of it bored the crap out of me but I read
it anyway. Those led me to develop the principles I have posted on my
web site, and to assess it all according to them.
http://www.AtheistLloyd.com/Principles.html
Why
did I do it? That answer is easy: because I got sick and tired of all
the bullshit, fuss and bother of one side bickering with multiple
others, all under the name of "Christianity". Because I learned in my
youth that there were still others, with strange kinds of names (as if
Christianity escapes sounding strange), waiting to cross my path with
new arguments and deepen the pool of my doubt. Because of all the times
I got told not to ask so many questions for which no one had answers,
that science seemed to have no problems with. When I said "It bored the
crap out of me," I meant that.
And
that was only the beginning of why's. I came out from the woods, sister,
magnifying glass and calculator in one hand, a science book and Bible in
the other, ready to tackle the world. Thank God I'm an atheist! Don't
let it bother you if God never answers back, for in that silence are all
the answers anyone should need.
Should I ever talk to God again, knowing how all-powerful and
all-knowing and all-capable the god named God is reputed to be, I would
beg, "God, since you supposedly can do so, please inspire everybody in
your creation to do exactly as I did, to make that promise in full
belief you know and understand all of our intentions, and to follow
through with all the sincerity they can muster, and accept the
consequences no matter what, dislike them or not. You must know this
world would be a so much nicer and friendlier place if you would do
that."
I
fully expect, if God exists, according to the path I took through life,
that will take place without delay. And, if God exists, then God knows
that if God does not exist, it most certainly will not. Don't let
yourself feel disappointed. Just hope God is more honest than Its
followers.
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