Atheist

Well I figured I would begin with one of the things that has affected me most in life so far. Religion. I have been through several stages in my life with religion. The first was acceptance. When I was a child, around 6 years old, my stepfather came into the room that my brother and I shared. He told us that we had to accept Jesus into our hearts, and had us swear a bunch of religious mumbo-jumbo. From that point on I was a Christian. I spent most of my life surrounded in religion. I went to Church, read the Bible, and prayed all the time. However, there were a ton of things that never made sense to me. As I questioned them, however, I was given the usual "faith" b.s. that makes its way into religious debates.

Luckily for me, I had a cousin, who was my role model constantly leading me to question things. He never explicitly told me I was wrong, he just pointed out the b.s. in religion and taught me to make my own conclusions. This was my question stage. I started to doubt God at this point. I read the Bible more fervently and asked more questions. It all came back to the same place, "faith" and that questioning just lead to doubt. This stage lasted for years. I would always defend God and faith when debating but the fact that I didn't have answers for a lot of questions bothered me. If we know so much about religion and God how come there were so many simple things we couldn't prove. This way of thinking comes from growing up in the U.S. and more importantly Alabama, in the heart of the Bible Belt. (I don't think that it's a coincidence that the Bible Belt runs most of the same stretch as Tornado Alley.)

Then came the revelation stage about a two years ago I began refusing to call myself Christian. I started to abhor the terrible things that the Bible claimed the "Lord" had done and even worse the terrible things done in the name of God. I especially hate the way that most "Christians" are. Most aren't Christ-like by any stretch of the imagination. They use their religion to promote racism, bigotry, homophobia, and the subjugation of minorities and women. What is worse is that many women and minorities further promote this by supporting a religion that allows for this much hatred. 

The betrayal stage came with my revelation that I no longer believed in the God I had been raised on. I felt betrayed by the religion that I had been forced into. I was always told Hellfire awaited anyone who wasn't saved. Now I realize that God isn't any more feasible than Zeus, Horus, or Thor. It pisses me off that I was deceived, but what's worse was I believed it. I know that it's not all my fault just like it's not all the faults of the people who deceived me. We have all been brainwashed since birth to believe these completely insane, impossible fairy tales.

The latest stage however has been what I like to call the enlightenment stage. Now that I know that what I believed was false I can do research and learn REAL FACTS about the world and the universe. No science doesn't have all the answers. No science can't prove that God isn't real. If you think logically, however, it is pretty apparent that he isn't. And with all the subjugation of women and justification of murder and rape God would have to be a male. Which is another proof that he is just a social construct, created and propagated by men. I am a man myself, however, I have the "good grace" to know right from wrong. I have an extremely simple code of morals that I will upload later. This code came from within myself. I didn't need some bronze age text to tell me how I should act.

In conclusion I am sick of religion. Think of the Dark Ages, religion has put science and technology back 1000+ years. It's time rational thinking people fight back. Religious people are just like I was. They think they are correct because they have been brainwashed so long. They will have to decide for themselves that God, or Yaweh or Allah, (same God, different beliefs) or any of the other religions are all false. They will have to come to that conclusion on their own or they will slip back into the same beliefs again someday. But just imagine a world without religion. Everyone will have to be responsible for their own actions and can't justify hate and anger because of some schizophrenic voice is telling them they are the "chosen people." A world where everyone will love each other.  It would cut the cause for war down by 90%. Then we would just have to battle greed and corruption. But without a religion backing those people they would have no justification and nothing to hide behind. I see it clearly. A new world order. A better world. This is the idea of My World.