The Why

    Lack of belief, on its face, is hard to justify. Put in any other context it almost seems absurd. Nobody would interrogate me on why I don't skydive or eat bananas. Yet, the fact that I don't believe is enough to bring frustration and tears to my parents. It is as though belief is the default position and straying from that is somehow abarrant and dangerous. I understand why. As a believer, Hell awaits those who don't think like you. But when you step outside that box, things look very different.

     We all share a certain level of non-belief. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of gods that you don't believe in no matter what your faith is. Why we find the gods of ancient cultures absurd is something I don't understand. The Greeks had as much reason to believe in their gods as we do ours, but for some reason one set of deities is taught as mythology and another is taught as fact. From a young age, I never understood this. I understand it better now, simply because I have acknowledged that it simply makes no sense.

     In the objections below I will refer to the Christian god since that is the one I am most familiar with due to my personal experience. Please apply them to the gods of your personal belief, whatever that might happen to be.

     Objection 1: Why is God any different than any other god? In other words, out of all the innumerable faiths throughout history why is yours the right one? Invariably when I ask this question I have a so-called holy book waved at me. Well, if there was only one such book, that might be a worthwhile argument, but there are many books to support many gods, so why is your book the book? I have heard many empty answers to this, but none are convincing. If you were to rearrange the names of any religious story even its adherents would find it absurd.

     Objection 2: Religion is so often wrong. Throughout history religion has been used primarily to explain the world we live in. The origins of life, the world, the universe, sin, pain, suffering and the very meaning of life were all under the purview of religion to explain. Religion has always been wrong on these subjects. Science has answered many of the questions that religion offered meager explanations for. In all cases, science has done better at solving these problems. In fact, invariably, religion constantly takes the best of scientific reasoning and them mutates it to fit their primitive ideas. Why should I believe the claims of miracles or eternal salvation when the claims of our origins or even basic history are incorrect? When science is proven incorrect, it is always by improved science. No scientific hypothesis has been proven wrong by an ancient text.

     Objection 3: Religion is immoral. I need not list the crimes of the followers of any particular religion here. For one thing, they are too extensive to possibly summarize. However, I mean that the religions themselves are immoral. In almost all cases, sectarian violence, segregation and discrimination of those who believe differently are all encouraged. In the case of the Christian god, sin is cured through the vicarious sacrifice of the only allegedly sinless individual of all time who also happens to be god himself. The mandate of self-hatred is unavoidable.

     I find it all fantastical and pathetic. I want nothing to do with it, and neither should you.