Closet Extremist

The whole "God" thing.

Before I get started in earnest on this post, I need to put a few caveats out there. As many of you know, I am an atheist. This entry will go into a lot of the reasons why I'm an atheist. These are merely my opinions and observations in regards to religion in general. I'm not putting them out here in order to try to make someone doubt their own belief's, or to try to convert anyone to atheism. Some of the statement's that I make will no doubt cause some people to become incensed or offended, but is not my intention to do so deliberately. I'm merely attempting to provide a context for some irreverance that I have displayed in the past, and will likely display in the future.

Religion is a very touchy subject with most people, so I'll place my thoughts in the extended entry. If you feel like you might be offended, please feel free to check out the links over on the sidebar. Good stuff over there.

A Little Backstory.

I wasn't born a athiest, as you might have guessed. I have progressed into my point of view over the first 25 years or so of my life. In my early years, I was a Baptist. Sunday school, the whole bit. I didn't have a problem with going to church, and generally enjoyed the company of the other kids. The lessons that they taught were also good ones. The Ten Commandment's, The Golden Rule, not bad things at all. Then we moved.

After we finally got settled in Chattanooga, TN, (Moved from Murfreesboro, TN) my family found another church to go to. The new place decided that I needed to be baptised, despite the fact that the church in my previous town had already done that. This was my first indicator that something about this whole "religion" thing wasn't quite right. I went through with the second baptism without any complaint though, what can I say? I was seven or eight at the time. (My memory is a little fuzzy about my exact age, but I was pretty young.) As far as I recall, the reasoning for my second "dunking" was something on the order of "the first one didn't count". Pretty specious if you ask me.

I know that we didn't go to that church for very long, and my parent's never decided on another place for us to go worship. The subject never really came up around the house as to why, but it didn't matter to me at the time. I had my Sunday morning's and my Wednesday night's to play. Happy kid, I was.

Skip forward to my teen years. I was invited to go to service by one of my friends at school. It must've been my Junior year, as I recall that I was going through my "rebellious phase". (Torn jeans, Biker boots, and generally being a surly teenager.) My friend reassured me that I would be accepted there withoput a problem. I went to the service, and I can honestly admit that I felt "something". That place was just full of energy, but it didn't last. That experience scared me a bit. I'd never felt that effect before, but shortly after that I went to my first Rock concert, and recognized the feeling immediately. I never went back to that church.

For years I described myself as an Agnostic. Dictionary.com defines agnostic as:
1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.

Number 2 suited me the best. I was skeptical, but not ready to "take the plunge". I researched around. Reread the Bible. Read the Necronomicon. Hung out with Wiccans. Looked at history. Just generally looked into the whole aspect of religion's in general. I found that everything pointed to a decided non-existence of a supreme diety. I decided that I should go ahead and describe myself as an Athiest. For a short time, I described myself as a Secular Humanist, but that didn't ring true for me. It seemed way too pretentious, so I went back to just calling myself an atheist.

My Understanding of the Nature of God.

It is my belief that God is a creation of man. I came to this conclusion after looking at the historic progression of religion's in general. Hearken back to the Greeks/Romans, if you will. The differing God's outlined in their mythology have something decidely pointed about their stories. Each either provides an explanation for something that they didn't understand (Zues throwing lightning, Aphrodite guiding Love), or supported them in some endeavor that they deemed important (Ares presiding over War, Hermes over athletic ability). Hmmn, I see a pattern forming here.

It's arguable that Judaism was the first major religioun to posit that there was only One God. Theirs was a particularly Harsh God, but there it was anyway. They were also one of the first to eschew "Graven Images". There were symbols that were holy to them (The Swastika, the Star of David), but there was no particular Image of their God. He was everywhere and nowhere. He was always watching. What a good way to control your citizen's congregation. Do this, or God will strike you down. The best example of this that springs to mind is the whole concept of not eating pork. We now know that eating undercooked meat can cause Trichinosis. The heads of the church opbserved the symptoms of eating this animal, (especially if it wasn't prepared right) and took steps to ensure that their people did not succomb to the effects that it has. So they declared that swine was unclean in the eyes of God, thereby forbidding anyone from eating it. The populace saw that after this declaration was made, the instances of people getting sick dropped. Therefore God was right. Nothing better than a real result to get your congregation to truly "believe". Also there is the fact that if you broke a Jewish law (and got caught at it), you would be excommunicated at best, or stoned to death at worst. These people weren't playing around.

Next up, there was this "groovy Jew" called Jesus that decided that all this killing and banishing wasn't good for folks, decided to tell people about it, and he made a big impact on people. He was killed by the people that didn't think that his idea's were allright, and just a few short centuries later, the Catholic church came to power. The people that started the church decided that Jesus' story would make a fine parable. Thus began the idea of "absolution". Jesus died for your sins, so that you could be forgiven. But you've got to talk to apriest about what you've done, and atone for your sins. Catholicism caught on in a big way.

NJext came the Protestants, who thought that the mere act of allowing Jesus into your life to atone for your sins, was a lot better than actually having to tell other people what you'd done and then do a penance. Much simpler process. Not to mention the fact that they are focused more on the "son" and the "Holy Ghost", than they are on the "Mother of Christ" Mary. This eventually became a big point of contention between the two septs, and eventually led to out and out war in Ireland.

Muhammed, thaought that Jesus had the right idea with his whole "Be excellent to each other" theology, and spun off his own idea's. They were roughly an amalgam of the extremes of the "Harsh God" of Judaism, and the "Groovy God" of "Christianity". Unfortunately, the basic idea's of the original religion did the same thing as what happenned with Christian's. They came to blows over the difference in interpretations of the original writing. Thus we have Shiite's killing Sunni's, in our modern arena.

It is my opinion that God is an abstract. A way to control your populace. Merely an idea.

The Bible

to be continued...

Posted by Johnny - Oh at August 28, 2004 10:21 PM