Outspoken: Confessions of a Devout Atheist

1. In the Beginning

     I guess there's no better place to start.

     In the beginning there was... nothing.

     I'm just guessing here because I wasn't really around when it all started. Truth is nobody was. We can't even agree on where the beginning started as the answer changes depending on who you ask. According to some scientists the universe is billions of years old, which long predates not only our species but the planet that supports us. This is where we come to the theory of the big bang, the moment when non-matter turned into matter and the universe just came to be. Then we have the side of those who are religious, who happen to believe that this plane we inhabit is only six thousand years old and was the product of a creation that only took seven days to accomplish. Without a shred of evidence (unlike evolution that has countless fossils and data to back up its claim) we can pretty much go with the conclusion that the whole idea of 'creative design' is pure, unadulterated, grade A bullshit. Until someone can come forward with something other than faith, why on earth should anyone ever consider it?

     Let's get this one out of the way first: Faith is not evidence. Not a single court of law accepts hearsay as evidence, so why should we the public accept that when selecting which higher being (if any) to worship? If you want me to believe that there is an almighty intangible parent figure that shakes a hand at us from over three thousand years ago, living in a celestial place in the clouds to party with your soul with it's all said and done, I'm going to need a little more than faith to believe these extraordinary claims. To paraphrase the late great Dr. Carl Sagan, "no one should ever be afraid to pursue the extraordinary, but extra ordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

     People have tried to call my atheism something that runs on faith. It does not because my decision to not follow religion was made based on a lack of evidence. I refused to follow because there is no enough evidence to suggest that anyone should follow any religion. There is just about as much evidence to support these fairytales then there is to follow tales about seven dwarves, a galaxy far, far away or one ring to rule them all. We don't follow those stories because we know they're fiction and I choose not to follow organized religion for the same reason: they are not real based on an absence of evidence.

     But that isn't where it all started for me. The beginning of the end for religion started in Sunday school, which was every Sunday morning in the school that I attended my first four years in. It was ironic that my Sunday school was being hosted by a public school, something I doubt you'd see happen today but mine was. It was just down the street from my house and I'm sure my parents loved the idea of dumping the kids onto someone else every Sunday for a few hours. My parents had three boys, myself being the middle child, and while I am sure they enjoyed every little break they got, it wasn't meant to be for very long. I got bored of these classes, didn't pay attention and even started trouble to prevent myself from dying of boredom. Finally my parents were told that I wasn't welcome in Sunday school anymore, I was too disruptive and didn't respect the class to the point where it would affect their ability to 'spread the word' to the other kids. With one kid coming home, my parents failed to see why they should bother letting anyone go and we all came back home and never went to Sunday school again. My older brother is agnostic now, and I suspect the same for my little brother so I guess I could take responsibility for it but I can't assume that. There is a good chance my brothers have their own story and a different path they took to get to where they stand today so I won't assume that anything that happened in my life defined their non belief.