I’ve had to write this, or something like it, twice now since coming out as a godless person on the internet.  So I’ll put it here, and if anyone asks again, they’ll get a link.

(For the record, I am A-OK with you having a religion.  If you like it, and it’s working for you, then great.  By all means, keep on keeping on.)

*Instead of God, I believe in physics and chance.  Really.  We are here because of physics and many, many years of chance.  Everything else is here for the same reason.  I don’t know how it all began, and perhaps all that stuff I can’t explain is “god” to me.  But I do not believe that there is a sentient entity that decided to create all this stuff, and put everything “just so.”

Gravity works.  Show me god and I’ll think about shifting my beliefs.  

*Instead of Heaven and Hell, I believe in Here.  I do not believe in an afterlife.  When we die, our bodies decompose, and our “soul” goes with it.  The closest I come to believing in heaven is how we lives our lives here, and how we’re feeling in our own head.  If we’re jerks to other people, or make our home an unhappy place to be, then we’re creating our own hell to live in.  

Ghosts?  I don’t know.  I have seen and heard things I can’t explain.  But I use Occam’s Razor - I am more likely to believe in a strange shift in the wind, or electrical anomalies, than in a human or animal spirit that is trapped between two worlds.

Make your heaven here and enjoy it while you can.  Do what makes you happy, create happiness for others around you, and keep your area clean.

*Instead of Satan, I believe in people.  Satan, the devil, Lucifer, whatever… does not “make” us do anything.  He/it does not tempt us… we are tempted all by ourselves.  I certainly don’t need an outside source to blame my greed and sloth on.  I’m just lazy and like stuff.  So are you.  We have a constant internal struggle to keep checks and balances in our daily lives, so that our “wants” don’t overwhelm our “needs.”  If I do something I’m not supposed to, it’s my own damn fault, as much as I would love to blame it on a mythical entity.  

We cause our own problems.  Why is it so hard to own up to it?  

*Instead of prophets, I believe in smart people with good ideas.   The day that God speaks directly to me, I’ll start believing in him, her, or it.  Until then, I’m not going to believe any one individual who claims that god is talking to them and giving them information to pass along to us.  Seriously, if god is all powerful, then surely it can communicate to all of us at the same time if it has something really important to convey.

This is why, if I had to pick, I would be Buddhist.  Buddha had some really great things to say; smart things that could make our lives better and easier.  But he never claimed to be getting his info from god - he was just a man with great ideas and the balls to pass them around.  (Unfortunately, there are situations where I would kill another human being, which would make me a pretty poor Buddhist.)

*Instead of being threatened with burning for eternity, I believe in not being an asshole for the sake of not being an asshole.  Sure, many of the commandments make sense - they make it easier to live with one another.  I also like a lot of the “rules” from the Bible, Quran, Torah, Principia Discordia, etc… Don’t kill each other, Stop stealing stuff, Don’t screw around with someone else’s mate, Respect one another - these are all awesome things to live by.  But we shouldn’t have to be threatened with hell to make us want to follow them.  How about just thinking about what life would be like if we didn’t?  Well, it would be pretty hellish.

Ethics and morals shouldn’t be beaten into us with threat.  They should be taught by example by people of high standing in the community.  (Politics, anyone?)

*I don’t need church to create a community of like minded people to hang out with.  This should be self-explanatory.  I believe that churches were formed because we lost our villages.  When people spread out to farm instead of hunt and gather, or when villages got too big for their britches and became cities, our small circle of like-mindedness was lost.  Churches helped to fill that void and let us connect again with a number of people comparable to a comfortable, old school human group.

But now we have other ways of making and keeping friends.  I have plenty of friends, of all different beliefs and faiths, and I don’t need a church as an excuse to keep them close to me.

*I can make my own dogma, thanks.  I already have little rituals that make me feel connected, safe, and content.  I hug my kids daily, milk my goats, make music, have sex, and knit.  

*I will never mold my life around a book.  I don’t care who wrote it.  And since you’ll never convince me that god did (unless it shows up and says so itself), then don’t bother trying the whole “this is the way it should be because it was written here” argument.  Also, unless you are reading said holy book in its original language, I say it doesn’t count.  We all know how much one translation can screw things up, not to mention countless translation from questionable sources.

I have read the bible, start to finish, including the cliff’s notes.  I have seen all of the things that don’t make sense for this day and age (or ever, actually).  I have a very hard time believing every single story in there as they are written (although I’m open to different interpretations, and I do love historical accounts that parallel the catastrophic events).  

I’m actually down with picking and choosing the gems out of these books - “Love thy neighbor” (that would include me, your godless neighbor, by the way), “Stop fucking killing each other” (maybe it wasn’t written just like that, I can’t remember)… those are awesome.  Let’s go ahead and keep those.  But I think it’s safe to do away with the “don’t eat pork and shellfish” now that we know how to cook them.  I also love to read it as a snapshot of a past era.  There is some really interesting and cool stuff in there.

But really…I would like someone to find all the contradictions, not to mention just plain weird shit (Lot being raped by his two daughters?  What morals do we learn from that?), in their holy book, and then explain to me how they possibly follow the entire thing.  Can we make a condensed version or something?

*I believe that religion exists because it is comforting to some.  I also believe that it is a fine numbing agent, an easy explanation for things we don’t yet understand, a way to control the masses, an excuse for bad behavior, and for some to bring themselves to an unquestionable power.  However, it does make me really happy when religion “works” and people behave themselves better because of it.  I would like to think that those same people would continue that kind of behavior if they weren’t being threatened with hell-fire and brimstone… in most cases I’m sure it’s true.  Ethical people are ethical, after all.  My godless self included.