Thank you, God, for making me an Atheist. I can love who I want to. I can hang out with anybody regardless of their ideas or beliefs, and, unlike my religious friends, I live by my principles without picking and choosing what parts of my professed credo I wish to observe. I can have sex with them, if we so choose, and I chose to love one woman. My wife and I honor our marriage not for our vows or what it says in a holy book, but because we love and respect one another.
I am not wracked with guilt from fearing an invisible bean counter who watches my every move. Sin is a personal concept not dictated to me by any other human being, apparently representing a higher power and thus having an exorbitant amount of sway over my private life. I give no unearned credence to anyone based on association. That means no one tells me how to think or vote, what to watch on TV, what music I like, who my friends are, who I should love or how to spend my money. I’m not worried about getting to Heaven or avoiding Hell. It’s very liberating! My Sundays are free. My Saturdays would be too except for the car, house and lawn. Only the government taxes me, which gives me a financial boost over my double-taxed religious neighbors.
My charity work stems out of a sense of community. I give, I share, I nurture because it makes me feel good to do so. I don’t feel entitled to special rights, treatment or privilege supposedly due a spiritual individual, nor do I suffer disappointment when I don’t receive them. Everybody should be treated the
same way.
As an atheist I am a member of a community of people of various ideas and concerns. We don’t get
together in a building once a week to realign our thoughts and ask for forgiveness for the sins we committed during the week (only to go back out and do them all over again).
We have families too but treat them a little differently than our Christian brothers and sisters. We earn our children’s respect. Our sons do not have to obey every word on threat of a God-given right to beat them. Our daughters do not have to submit to husbands. And they can believe in any invisible man in the
sky they choose because they have choice. We don’t expose them to the charlatans, thieves, hucksters and sexual predators of a church.
Even if You are up there I think you would understand my reservation. Why the world is here is one of those unanswerables we so far have to accept, but no being who has the power and understanding to
create the universe would write such primitive claptrap as the Bible or the Koran. You would know demons do not cause disease and that the earth is not flat.
As a Supreme Being, You obviously did not make the sun over the flat earth. As our Creator, You are not
a jealous god because you understand that’s all bullshit. Women don’t have to be stoned to death for being raped and not crying out, or children for questioning your (very quiet) existence. I don’t take my examples for living from any ancient text written thousands of years ago by a socially primitive people – thank God! And I don’t hate God (as some would assert) because there’s nothing to hate.
I am not wracked with guilt from fearing an invisible bean counter who watches my every move. Sin is a personal concept not dictated to me by any other human being, apparently representing a higher power and thus having an exorbitant amount of sway over my private life. I give no unearned credence to anyone based on association. That means no one tells me how to think or vote, what to watch on TV, what music I like, who my friends are, who I should love or how to spend my money. I’m not worried about getting to Heaven or avoiding Hell. It’s very liberating! My Sundays are free. My Saturdays would be too except for the car, house and lawn. Only the government taxes me, which gives me a financial boost over my double-taxed religious neighbors.
My charity work stems out of a sense of community. I give, I share, I nurture because it makes me feel good to do so. I don’t feel entitled to special rights, treatment or privilege supposedly due a spiritual individual, nor do I suffer disappointment when I don’t receive them. Everybody should be treated the
same way.
As an atheist I am a member of a community of people of various ideas and concerns. We don’t get
together in a building once a week to realign our thoughts and ask for forgiveness for the sins we committed during the week (only to go back out and do them all over again).
We have families too but treat them a little differently than our Christian brothers and sisters. We earn our children’s respect. Our sons do not have to obey every word on threat of a God-given right to beat them. Our daughters do not have to submit to husbands. And they can believe in any invisible man in the
sky they choose because they have choice. We don’t expose them to the charlatans, thieves, hucksters and sexual predators of a church.
Even if You are up there I think you would understand my reservation. Why the world is here is one of those unanswerables we so far have to accept, but no being who has the power and understanding to
create the universe would write such primitive claptrap as the Bible or the Koran. You would know demons do not cause disease and that the earth is not flat.
As a Supreme Being, You obviously did not make the sun over the flat earth. As our Creator, You are not
a jealous god because you understand that’s all bullshit. Women don’t have to be stoned to death for being raped and not crying out, or children for questioning your (very quiet) existence. I don’t take my examples for living from any ancient text written thousands of years ago by a socially primitive people – thank God! And I don’t hate God (as some would assert) because there’s nothing to hate.