I was bitter about religion and how believers treated me back when I realized I didn’t believe in God and EVERYONE around me did. I was totally convinced everyone around me was “wrong” for believing in imaginary things that no one ever saw- but I was the one crazy one. Being ridiculed and told to be quiet and that i was silly for just asking questions and having such an outlandish belief that there might not be a God. I remember how it wasnt easy stating publicly that I was an atheist on my first webpages (I can actually visualize the moment i did it). I was uncomfortable wondering how family, friends, co workers etc would react to it. This was a time when I could be called bitter and angry at religion and the people who believed. I see now it was because I felt I could not express my own belief freely, and I resented that. Note: It was significant that I was very independent and living alone when I went public with my atheism.
Over time (years) as the people around me accepted my athiesm I grew more confident and I posted the “Atheist Walking” video- maybe the first real atheist video ever on YouTube. This video started an atheist revolution on YouTube that grew into other many mediums. It was during this time that I found fellowship and like minded people to express and share with. My bitterness and anger began to slowly go away to the point now where I’m just occasionally mildly irritated and frustrated by folks! LOL
And in fact, I have posted many videos denounincing angry atheists! They are some mean spirited and disrespectful folks and I didn’t agree with that. These people have went thru horrible things with their familes and communities and maybe had a “right” to be angry and bitter. I was living alone when I came out, but there are young people dependant on family who were thrown out and disowned. There are many stories of cruelty and pressure put on non-believers by the society around them and they reltaliated with anger and aggression once they found they had others who shared the same experience. So after 100,000 or so video views I became content and passive. I was relaxed cause I made my point and began to focus on the next step of my atheistic activism. And that was to find a compelling and “logical” reason why mankind should not believe in God. To identify specific reasons and the costs involved in holding these primitive beliefs.
So over the years, to make a long story shorter, I came to the personal conclusion that the current major religions, the bible and God simply don’t answer enough of todays modern questions adequately. “Have faith” and “put it in Gods hands” simply doesn’t work today. In a society and culture that has detailed scientific answers to almost everything at our fingertips, a 2000 year old book with generalized vague ideas leaves mankind only half full.
It’s not enough anymore to “control” Man’s behavior with the threat of judgement and heaven or hell. Mankind needs deeper modern reasoning and understanding of a ideal or goal to have faith in. Believing a God created us and we will go to a heaven is very detrimental to the human experience. This life is all we got and to survive, I mean really survive over millions of years we must go beyond this thinking and make long range strategies. And to make these strategies our best bet presently is in the accumulated knowledges of research, science and experiment. We need to know how things really work and not that “God does it.” One of the things that use to make me really mad was the idea that there are things Man is not supposed to know, things that only God can know. That and the idea that Man and life is weak, flawed, imperfect and we are “sheep” and only God can be perfect. This institutionalized widespread teaching cripples us as a species. Teaching our children not to go beyond the knowledge of God is an ultimate sin to me. And I was sure to let my children know that.
I truly believe if we had the faith in ourselves that we have in God 97% of our problems would go away. We would act and think differently, more so we would act and not pray. We would cherish life much more deeply knowing this is it and there is no heaven and that we won’t see loved ones again. I believe we must develop and have faith in things that have a scientific basis that proves to assist humanity in it long range survival. We must cherish the Earth- Sun ecosystem cause life as we know it survives no where else in the universe. This is it and we are all we have. And we are all we need! WE MAKE MIRACLES, NOT GOD!!! But we are not taught that, we are taught the exact opposite in fact!!!
The killings and bombings and shootings will continue until we reach a new “higher” level of understanding about Mankind’s role (and thereby every individuals role) in the universe. Im not sure what this understanding will be but I know the Bible and a God in the sky no longer seems to satisfy us. The people doing these acts are not complete lunatics or even evil, some are mentally imbalanced sure, but the thrust is they have been pushed to a breaking point which I believe is they feel they cannot be part of the overall functioning system. These are people who feel lost, abandoned and even threatened by the natural workings of our socio-economic system.
My idea is that the goal of life is survival, simply put to continue. And mankind is at the forefront of life as we know it at this point. Mankind has a responsibility to life, because we have consciousness to grow and nurture life. NOT GOD!! US!! And I dont see this happening with the core of the world believing the earth is temporary and that being with a God and in heaven is the ultimate goal.
Side Note: You mentioned something earlier about me and black people. I’m not sure what you meant but I will say this. Black people are stuck in that “God is everything” way of thinking. (Im speaking in general and statistics on religious beliefs back me up). Black people love Jesus and not science. And yes, there will be a few exceptions to what i said, but how many black people do you know who could tell you what the Large Hardron Collider is? And yeah, there may not be many other kind of people who could, but of the ones who can tell you about the God particle the overwhelming majority of them aint black and believe Jesus was God.
