Essay:Abnormality of the atheist religion - a response


 * This essay is a response to the Conservapedia essay "Essay: Abnormality of the atheist religion" by Jpatt.

Well, Jpatt really is honest for once. But he writes several things that are wrong. I will use quotes, but only to answer to the specific questions, as he didn't make any sections he'll have to live with that.

"They deem the Bible an outlandish joke perpetuated by one crazy man."
Joke: no, outlandish: not that much…

"There was nothing and than there was something." / "They believe nothing created everything. There was a big bang and the wheels have been in motion ever since."
I don't know if there always was something or not, but not in the way you may think. In fact we know from everything we know that there was a big bang, at the moment it is the theory that makes the most sense (at least that is my view without any science degree). But, I actually believe that there always was something and that there always will be something, again not in the way you may think. I believe that our universe has an endless cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crushes, why that is I can't tell, but I'm very sure that you couldn't tell why you believe god to always have existed. I also believe that our universe is not alone, but that there are many other universes, maybe even an endless amount of universes in a completely different kind of -verse, a Multiverse. I am not a non-believer, I believe what I described. But atheism is not a religion it is a lack of faith in the supernatural - either a god or all supernatural beings. Atheism has no canon, because every Atheists is allowed to make up their own minds, there are many atheists with different believes of what the universe is. Some think that there is evidence for aliens, others don't. Some believe there to be Marxist classes, others don't. Atheism has no canon, one can be an atheist but not believe that evolution occured, or the big bang or that this actually is the reality we live in and not a computer simulation. What you see as atheism, is the majority of people that consider themselves atheists. You see their actions as what atheism is, but that is not the core of atheism. The core of atheism is that non-believe. We then go to other ways, other tools so to speak, that can explain us how the world works, because we as humans need that possibility or we would feel depowered. This tool leads to many different roads, the one most taken is evolution and the big bang. This is all that it is.

"Religion is the cause of all evils."
No it isn't. Men is the cause of all that he considers evil, men is also the cause of all that he considers to be good. I believe the believe is to caused by man and to be good and evil at the same time. I don't believe that ther is "good" and "evil", I believe is this concept to be a sharp knife, but unnatural - but I believe in beneficiality, that there is in fact "befecial" and "unbeneficial". I believe that certain religions have done more harm then good, and I would certainly say that Christianity is one of those. On the othr side we have the Bahá'í, wonderfully peacefull people, people I would consider saints, or the Buddhist monks, what one might call the upper class buddhists, those who actually read his teachings rather then being told what he teached, or the straight-forward philosophical Daoism, that gave me a wonderfull philosophical clarity for years, free from emotions and guilt, just being. There are atheists that believe that all religion is bad, but that is not the majority - by far not. Don't cherry-pick you enemies believes, that is not honest, that is not Christian.

"They are the smarts ones, they reasoned and determined life a lie."
I consider several people that have faith to be smarter then me, I also consider many people that don't have faith smarter then me, and much more I can't say on that topic. Life is not a lie, life is true, life is reality, not matter if you serve a greater reason or not - life is the most true thing there is. Where does that thought even come from? Or is just that that is a smear speech to devaluate atheism? To make people go: "Oh that can't be! Those atheists are absurd!"?

Many atheists have not reasoned at all, the same way you believe that there is a god, we believe that there isn't one. I "lost" or "freed myself from" (It depends on your perception) when I was about 10. Nobody pushed me, nobody told me not to believe or to reason about it. In fact the very opposite was the case, people pushed me towards religion. My mother is a Christian, liberal but still a Christian, my father is a deist - all my relatives are Christians, even one of my aunts that has a doctorate degree in biochemistry is one. All my friends were Christians, not a single atheist there. There was nobody to indoctrinate me at all, at least not in any atheist manner. One day, I realized that I did not believe in god anymore, nothing bad or traumatic happend, it was simply a gut feeling that there isn't any god. I wasn't sad about it, but I felt guilty - so I tried to reason myself into it. I tried to proove to myself that god exists, with logic, with everything I had and I constantly failed. With 13 I gave up and left "Jungschaar" (a mixture of scouts - I don't write boyscouts because there also were girls there - and Sunday school), stopped going to church and told my parents how I felt - I was not disinherited nor screamed at, my mother wasn't particularly happy but that was all. It was only later that I ever heard of evolution or the big bang, from there on things started to make sense. I left church definitly when I was 21, I wanted to spare my mother the years so I stretched it a bit, I felt unbelievably free after I left, I never felt that free in my life before (not even when I became 18). Around the same time I told my uncle that I am not a Christian and that if he wants to give me a present he should do it on my birthday not on the day I was baptized (I did so because I felt it was wrong to ignore the actualy birthdate of atheist for something he doesn't believe in) - he stopped giving any presents because the day of the baptizing is the only thing that counts in gods eyes (I'm I dead to god then? - ah, nevermind). My now senile grandmother reacted with "When you have seen as much as I have, you will believe too". Over the years I met more and more people that professed their non-believe, today most of the people my age in Germany seem to be atheists (at least as I see it, but I'm a college student so my might be distorted), some of them reasoned some of them not. I also have Christian friends, not many but some. And no matter what we grant our fellow believing citizens the right to profess their believes as much as we want our right to profess our lack thereof - without saying that the other is evil, or shall not be talked to. I can't tell you how miserable I would have felt a few hundred years back, in times when I would not be able to step up and say that I don't believe, when others would not have been able to tell me either, when we maybe would have been burned alive because we felt a certain way. You see, many have reasonend that god doesn't exist, but not all. I can't imagine how it is in the US, a country where "atheist" is practically a smear word.

That death bed thing
You hope as much as I hope that we will rethink our believes on our respective death beds and that is ok. I see the "If you don't believe, you'll go to hell"-part of Christianity as blackmail, you want my soul to be saved (not that I believe that such a thing even exists), that is ok too. But I'm afraid I will disappoint you, and I'm afraid you will disappoint me.