The Road

The road out of theism tends to be a far more difficult one than the road to theism. The path to belief is typically based mainly on one or a few very emotional experiences. Christianity thrives on making people so terrified of going to hell that they will convert just because they fear god’s “punishment”. I used to be a hardcore fundamentalist. I drank the kool-aid. I was as true a believer as anyone. I thought that evolution was a bunch of bunk and that homosexuals were bent on turning everyone gay. Then I began to study, actually read the bible with my mind open to the possibility that it was wrong. Comparing the supposed infallible word of god with the findings of science and archaeology I discovered that wow, pretty much none of what is recorded in the bible actually happened. There is no extra-biblical evidence for anything before possibly king Josiah in the old testament. There is zero evidence of a man called Jesus living during the first century and the gospels can’t even agree on when he was born, when he was crucified, what happened at the tomb when he supposedly rose from the dead and so on. Reading books and articles on biblical translation I found that many of the translators of the canon added and took out a lot of things that are in the earliest, most reliable texts to fit their theology. But anyways, I don’t want this to turn into a rant. The path out of theism is paved with reason and logic, not emotion and blind faith. It is based on evidence, not filling things in with “god did it” because you can’t explain it, or don’t like the explanation. I find myself much happier now that I no longer have to hide my non-belief. I get my morals from reason, which I tend to find more ethical than many things that occurred in the bible. You do not need the bible to be a moral human being. I no longer feel like I have to be a bigot because god says that some people’s life choices are “sinful”. I look at the world with an open mind, and if evidence arises that proves god probably exists I will gladly come back, but I find that highly improbable. I find humanism to be the superior choice to religion.

Also, if there are comments, let’s try to keep them less vitriolic this time.