Why I Am an Atheist

Start with the basics: I pretty much became an atheist at the same age I stopped believing in Santa Claus -- if that was false, why not the rest of it?

Wait a minute! You may not want to go through all this. Continue to scroll down if you want, but the main stuff starts with Dennis Rodman and the Mormons. If you want a definition of my atheism, click here.

Was brought up in churchly surroundings, though, sang in the choir, and all that stuff (had two uncles who were clergymen, and my grandfather was an Episcopal bishop) -- went through a religious stage in late teens, even flirted with Scientology and Fundamentalism. A joke -- what phoniness there is about all formal human religions! All they have good going for them (apart from their moral influence, and I won't put that down) is the esthetic appeal of the old traditional services, especially the music. Nobody with the slightest bit of common sense, unblinkered by some ingrained belief mechanism, could believe in a lot of the stuff written down in whatever holy books are behind any given religion. There is poetry, good stories, some good advice in the Scriptures, also a lot of pure bullshit; to interpret any of it literally (as "gospel") is nonsense.

As to there being a creator of the Universe, or at least of the life within it, I am open-minded -- it is not something that can be proved one way or another scientifically or empirically. My only comment on this is that IF there is a God, universal creator, he/she/it would have enough to do running the universe to be concerned at all about the sins and misfortunes of individual human beings. We make ourselves too self-important to think that any god would give a shit, except in the more unusual and amusing cases (e.g., the Clintons, or R.M. Nixon). The only way that works properly is to accept belief in little godlets who have predefined areas of responsibility, like a cop on the beat. (In fact, I am rather inclined to being a Pagan, given my drothers -- if there are any gods, they are parochial ones, and behave by pure whim. It's a wonderful excuse for the ups and downs of human endeavor -- wonder why the Jewish/Christian/Muslim conglomerate gave up on that? It works a lot better than God's Will, which seems so passingly crude compared with the perfectly sensible explanation that your bad cess is a result of Juno's latest marital squabble with Jupiter, and you happened to sacrifice the innards of your last roasted lamb to the wrong side.)

And Now for Some of the Religion-Trashing You've Been Waiting for...

• Dennis Rodman and the Mormons: Give me a good laugh like this now and then. He said these Mormon people who run Utah are assholes. Well, they are, aren't they? Everybody I know who's been to Utah says so. But wow, the Politically Correct Gestapo came down on that comment in a hurry. So this jerk Rodman got punished unfairly for mouthing off about a group he knows nothing about. For those who think Mormons are respectable because they have Family Values and are abstemious about what they consume, please learn a little more than that, well, yes, they do indulge in a bit of bigamy. The religion was founded by a con-man in Ohio, Joseph Smith, who wrote a fourth-rate fantasy novel called the Book of Mormon, and claimed that the Angel Moroni revealed it to him as Golden Tablets in an Indian burial mound. Yeah, right. His followers, after his murder, eventually had to give up their bigamy under Federal laws (after running Utah as a separate mini-country for several years, but they deserved that right, at least, since they were the only people who settled there, and WERE fleeing persecution no matter how misguided they were). Just a few years ago they finally revised their doctrine to allow that black people are actually human beings. Let the LDS continue to run Utah, but just stay there please -- we don't want your preppy missionaries in civilized territory like New York or London. It is astounding to me that people will buy into a newly coined (i.e., within the last 200 years) religion, whose founder's credentials are a matter of public record, warts and all. There, I just threw Scientology, Christian Science, the Maharishi, Branch Davidians, and the rest into the cracked pot -- the followers of these cults are fools.
  
  
• The Virgin Mary as Co-Redeemer: Can you buy this one? There's a movement in the Roman Catholic Church to make this Doctrinal: That Jesus's mother shares the power of redemption with her son (so much for ecumenism if the Pope ever endorses this one from the infallibility throne -- does he wear a special hat when he's being infallible?). Looking at Christianity historically, one can see that the Roman version was superimposed on an established religious structure -- hell, that's the way empires are run -- and that the newly converted populace wouldn't give up their little gods who controlled this and that. Hence, the invention of Saints. [Apostles are another kettle of fish, too bad they use the term saint for them too, because it doesn't really mean the same thing.] The Virgin Mary was the first goddess transformed into a saint (was she Juno, or Minerva, or Diana, or all three? Judging by the words of some Mariolatrists, she is also Venus incarnate, but no sex involved, of course, except in one's head as a celibate mind game as a substitute for masturbation) -- otherwise Constantine and Co. could never have convinced the women of Rome to go with this change in the established religion. Then of course came St Christopher, St George, St Dismus and that bunch. I also feel sorry for the extinct followers of Mithras, who had their god's Christmas story and Resurrection ripped off by the Christers. Whatever or whoever Jesus was, there is nothing in his story to justify the Roman Catholic heirarchy of heavenly Jesus-substitutes. Why should you pray to St. Jude unless you think Jesus won't listen to you? -- and what good do you think it will do you? Big mistake if Pope J-P2 promotes the BVM even beyond her current status -- supposedly, he is a devotee of the BVM, but he seems to have some political sense and won't be 'inspired' to do this foolish act. However, it would be a neat move to undercut the feminist Catholics, who are wondering why the Vatican will not accept women as priests -- hey, you don't need a female priest, you have your own separate redemptress now. (Maybe the nuns will be allowed to set up secret chapels where they can perform Vestal Virgin rites -- or maybe they do that already.)

  Ooh, I hope Patrick Buchanan reads this. He'd go ballistic. I'd love to be condemned in one of his editorials. Ray Kerrison of the New York Post should also see this one. If anybody encounters this web page and happens to know their e-mail addresses, I would be grateful if you'd forward the URL.

  
  
  
• The Episcopal Church (Church of England): Let's not let the complacent religions glide on with their bless-the-animals approach to redemption (as in the annual elephant-poop-in-the-transept event at St John the Divine). Yeah, it's fun enough and not bad as media entertainment. But can you believe it? -- that the Anglicans went and trashed the most profoundly worded prayer book in the English language (for those who take words seriously, and not just the social occasion of showing your face in church) and replaced all your thou-art's with you-who's. Absolutely unforgiveable to an ex-Anglican. All I can say is that the modern Catholic version of the traditional Eucharist is even worse in syntax and language. Who ever invented this 'folk-mass' approach? Fourth-rate Peter, Paul, and Mary garbage -- has Bach been forgotten?
  
  [Of course, you will always have St Thomas's and the rich folk who support Channel 13, and that's cool.]
  
  
• FUNDAMENTALISTS!: (And isn't fundament another word for the anal region of the body?) How can one possibly have a rational argument with these people? Their mindset has been jello-molded by the HOLY BIBLE, which is the exact word of God (regardless of the fact that it was written by dozens of separate human beings over a period of several centuries -- they won't even listen to that analysis.) Hey, God said it, it's written down here in plain English. Right (as though God's native language is English).
  
  [There are also classic mistranslations, such as when King James's translators misread the Hebrew word for Oryx, or the Arabian antelope, which they had never heard of, and substituted 'Unicorn'. All kinds of bull has been circulating around this sort of thing for centuries -- and note also that the "Bible" we think we know, was originally translated from Greek to Latin to English, the Greek original being who knows what compilation of St Paul's followers was done from various Hebrew scripts -- there was no "Authorised Version" back then.-- KJ's committee of Oxford dons did at least pay lip service to the Hebrew, but the Jews, who could have given advice from the hip, say, had been exiled from England from about the time of bad King John until bad Oliver Cromwell, in one of his wiser acts, allowed Jews to immigrate once again -- but that was 30 years after our seminal Bible had already been published.]
  
  Noah's ark has been found on Mt Ararat, that proves everything. Well, who found it, where is it exhibited -- the British Museum? I think not. The world was created 6000 years ago, can't have been earlier, even if you add Methuselah's 900 years into the picture -- the begats just don't cover a longer period if you add them up, and therefore all geological evidence, dinosaur bones, etc. are false, put there by God just to mislead atheistic secular humanists who have destroyed Family Values and the righteous life. At least the Bible doesn't say the sun goes around the earth (the ancient Israelites weren't into astronomy, thank heavens), otherwise the Fundamentalists would be claiming that the whole space program was a fake. There are some who DO claim that, and there are also some flat-earthers still, but that at least can't be blamed on the Scriptures, just the misreading of obscure passages -- like Joshua or whoever making the sun stand still so that the Israelites could defeat their enemies in battle. "Creationism" as opposed to Evolution is one of their favorites. Darwin never said we were 'descended' from monkeys, just that generically we are a Primate species. Who can deny that?
  
  I really have no patience whatsoever with Christian Fundamentalists -- or Muslim Fundamentalists for that matter, but I don't want to get into that area since even the Iranis have access to the Internet, and well.... (I also don't want to express my opinions on Hasidic Jews on the Internet -- could end up circumcized with a dull knife.)

-- Yours in faithlessness, Grobius (6/97)

Note: Grobius is an alias, and does not live in Brooklyn, in fact not even on the planet Earth as we know it -- so don't bother with hiring a Hit Man or the Spanish Inquisition.