I am often asked by readers of my blogs and viewers of my youtube channel the following question: If I was convinced that Christianity wasn’t true, then why did I also discount my belief in God as well? The answer in my view is quite simple; I did not see the need to continue believing in God when I had found so many alternative explanations to the world and life in general.
I have been an atheist for the past 17 years and have found that life is so much simpler when it is viewed from a naturalistic perspective. One of the things that we as a species cannot control is nature. Nature does not discriminate against person, place, or thing. Nature is random and thoughtless and therefore a more ready explanation in my view as to why natural disasters happen. It explains how so many innocents can be killed in an earthquake, tsunami, and tornadoes among many other natural phenomenon.
Nature reminds us that life is fragile and not something we can control or determine its length. Children are born dead, and in general children die every day as well as people of all ages and races. There is no escaping death since it is one of those certainties that we can never shake. You are born into the world, you live your life for better or for worse, and then you die. Sometimes people die without fulfilling all of their worldly dreams or as they were on the path to fulfillment. Others never even come close to their dreams and live a life of suffering and under achievements.
I think that it is much more difficult to explain the deaths of friends, family, loved ones, and especially children when we include God in the equation. People waste their time looking for some meaning to every tragedy that touches their lives and often find it more difficult to move on in life. It is hard to try to find a reason why your loved one died suddenly and tragically in a car accident, mugging, or even worse, became the victim of a murderer. When you view the world as natural, it becomes self explanatory. There is no why, things just happen and it is in my opinion so much easier to deal with a loss than to try and figure out why God allowed such and such a thing to happen.
Superstition has never helped a person to deal with reality, nor helped a society to progress and excel in science and mathematics. Every once in awhile a brilliant researcher makes an awesome discovery as in the case of Mendel and his study of traits but it was not because he was enlightened by God. It was because he put in the work of a scientist and observer and used his mind to come to what was the most logical conclusions. He relied on experiments and evidence that could be reproduced by anyone willing to put in the work.
The thing of it is, people get born into this world with churches everywhere and holy books all ready written, so most people growing up presume that the world has already tested it's authenticity and since the majority of people believe religions to be true then, to their reasoning they must surely be true.
ReplyDeletePresuming something to be true without examination is the biggest mistake most people make.
I completely agree, it is something most people just accept because everybody else does. In most cases your family tells you how great God is from a very young age. They teach you stupid little ditties and prayers and begin the indoctrination before you are even old enough to think for yourself.
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