Never has my resolve in my atheistic ideals been stronger. It seems like more and more people I know have some kind of religious affiliation. I have been so hard pressed to find people who share my religious preference (or, rather, lack thereof). I have two friends, that I know of, that are also atheist. One is the founder of this blog, my good friend Joseph. The other is my girlfriend. A lot of people have also been trying to get me to come back to Catholicism, or at least some kind of religion. Mainly, it's been my parents and (now deceased) grandmother. To be honest, I feel they've been trying a little too hard. I operate under a condition of if you have to try to convince my to do something, I will generally assume it's a bad idea. If I really liked what someone was serving up to me, they wouldn't have to put any effort into convincing me. If I put up resistance, it's usually because something is throwing up a red flag.
I can't stand it when people try to convert someone to a certain religion. It's just an act of desperation. If your organization has such a strong foundation, it should be able to support itself. I don't care what a book says. If it's so accurate, people should be flocking to its "truth" by themselves. If God were so "omnipotent," he would be able to "call all peoples to himself" by himself, would he not? He wouldn't need his followers to do it for him. If God were able to do this, that would mean people who have never heard of Christianity before (or any other religion, for that matter) would suddenly start believing in it without any provocation, or without knowing exactly what Christianity is. They wouldn't know that God was trying to speak to them in some way, bu they wouldn't have to realize it was the "voice of God" because God could technically just be able to convince whoever it is that he or she was hearing the "voice of God." He would therefore have no problem converting them himself.
God is supposed to have created the whole of time and space, but needs a species of animal to spread his word? I think a lot of times, humans forget what they really are. We are animals. To think that an entire universe is governed by a deity that favors one species of creatures as "his own," his master creation, is just plain arrogant. Other than the fact that we have advanced cognitive reasoning, we function just the same as any other species. We are born, we grow, we reproduce, and we die.
There is no purpose to life (outside of human judgment). We have such a selfish interpretation of life. Our thinking this way probably stems from the Bible itself. (Ecclesiastes 3:1) "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." The delusion of being under the control and will of an all-powerful deity has given the illusion of purpose. I don't believe in giving a preference. God gives preference to humanity, while nature has no such bias. This is the way the universe ought to be understood by humanity, but unfortunately, we don't get this. It doesn't care what happens to humanity (or itself, or anything else) because the universe is not sentient in nature. It couldn't care even if it wanted to because it does not exist in the same form as we do. It just exists. It's as Carl Sagan describes our planet. We are just a "pale blue dot" in the universe. That's all it is, really. We mean nothing.
Everything that we hold as valuable is only valuable because we have made it so. There is no such thing as a universal value. As stated earlier, the universe doesn't care about us. Yes, ideals like "love," "happiness," "hope," etc... seem like "nice" concepts, and the feel "good," but that is only from a human standpoint. Do animals feel these things? Because they don't speak English (or any other human language), can they "receive God's word"? No. They can't. Why? Because humans invented it. We don't communicate with animals the same way we do with other humans, so they could never have the "word of God" spread to them, which would automatically damn them to hell. Or, at least, it would mean that if we actually treated all creatures as equal, but unfortunately we don't.
This universe is too vast for us to matter in the way that religion makes us out to. People didn't have the kind of knowledge that we do now back when religions started. We have learned so much about the universe that I honestly don't see anymore where any sort of deity, Christian or not, would fit into the picture at all. I was fully prepared to take God out of my life because I saw a better world without a God. Sure, the prospect of a world without God scared me at first, having been raised a Catholic for my entire life. I was so into my faith, too. I got as involved at church as I possibly could, I went on retreats, I did everything. Never once when I was at church or on a retreat did I ever think that I'd end up as an atheist. I was fully prepared to keep being involved, especially with TEC (Teens Encounter Christ) for the rest of my life. Look at me now. I'm boasting to the world in a loud voice that I am proudly an atheist, and will be for the rest of my life.
My conversion has opened up so much to me that I find fascinating. I've been able to see the world in a new light, see new possibilities from old schools of thought, learn and discover ideals and concepts about the human race that I never thought could possibly have existed. I've been told that there is no light without God, but for once I've seen the true light of reality. It's a very dim light, though. Reality is very cold, dark, and unforgiving, but I've grown to accept it. Once I got past the culture shock (and believe me, it was quite a nasty jolt), I saw a beautiful world around me. Not just the world, but the unforgiving, unbiased, uncreated, self-sustaining, ever-changing, and undeniably real universe.
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