Firstly, I wish to describe my
‘Atheism’ - that is, the way that my mind
perceives it. It is by no means an academic definition of
Atheism, but will certainly be quite close to the general
and accepted view. I believe it is what is known as
‘Strong Atheism’. Thus:
"Atheism for me is the total, and
absolute rejection of the existence of a divine being.
This includes any divine beings - be it a divine being of
Christians, Muslims, Jews or any other religious group.
There is, never has been, and never will be any form of
divine being." I could go on, but this definition
will, for me, suffice.
I do not believe that the ancient Jewish Rabbi
‘Jesus Christ’ ever existed, and as more and
more evidence as to that non-person’s non-existence
becomes generally known and available I am ever more
confident in that belief. Also, I am positive that we
need to understand the reality which is in front of our
own eyes, understand that which is factually verifiable,
and not be guided by a bunch of ancient middle-eastern
mumbo-jumbo. The Bible was written by humans for humans
and is nothing more than that. It is a book. It can prove
nothing above that which the original writers believed -
beliefs born of ignorance, superstition and tradition. It
is quite peculiar that those who profess to be Christians
only practice their faith within their ‘comfort zone’
of belief. One would expect a true Christian to be out
there in the world faithfully practising the teachings of
their saviour, but this is obviously not the case.
Perhaps there are only a few dozen true Christians left
on this planet?
The understanding of scientific literature is
difficult, for the most part, for most people including
this writer, to comprehend. Nevertheless, that is no
reason for not having a good attempt at trying to read
and understand at least some of it. There are many books
and documents on evolution, philosophy, science and
religion available in our local libraries, and on the
Internet that are written specifically for we ‘laymen’.
Have a go at reading them. By all means read the Bible,
but try to understand it within the context it was
written. Do the same with scientific literature.
Criticise the bible, criticise all scientific literature,
and criticise evolution but make any decision about them
on facts, evidence and the truth. Be incredulous. If your
religion precludes the knowledge contained within banned
books and documents do your best to obtain and read those
volumes. Formulate your own opinions and decide for
yourself why they have been banned. If you are religious,
read up on the history of that religion and its followers,
I guarantee that you will be most surprised if you have
not already done so - especially if you are a Christian.
We don’t believe, in this day and age,
that a stage magician can really turn his wand into a
live snake, or turn water into wine so why should we
believe it when the same explainable effects appear in a
so-called ‘sacred’ text? If it were not so
tragic, Christian belief even after an explanation of a
scientific, rational, logical, truthful nature to the
contrary, would be humorous in the extreme.
I am Mr. Average. I am 43 (as of the year 1999);
I live in England - about one hour’s drive away from
London. I have a house, car, satellite TV, a microwave
oven and most of the other consumer goodies. I enjoy
normal pastimes and pursuits - reading, eating, driving,
music, listening to the radio, and watching the TV.
Whilst admitting that I do, along with the rest of the
human race, have a few faults, I don’t consider
myself particularly immoral. And definitely not in the
same league of immorality as promulgated in the Christian
Holy Bible. In most aspects of my life I hope that I am a
relatively reasonable person.
My religious upbringing was one of mild Church
of England Christianity, indeed I was in the local church
choir - I was a boy soprano. Funnily, the music that I
enjoyed singing the most was the section from Stainer's 'Crucifixion'
where the gathered throng repeatedly proclaim "Crucify
Him!". I also enjoyed singing at weddings - the
choirboys were paid a few pre-decimal shillings each. I
hated Sunday evensong, which was a real dirge. My
education, I suppose, was quite average, I attended a
Church of England junior school and later, an average
secondary modern school. I went to college where I
studied music. And now, in my middle age, I find myself
running computer systems. I am not particularly
intelligent, but I do admire those that are. During my
later childhood I came to realise that there were no gods.
There was no kind of anti-revelation, just a gradual
wearing away of unbelievable beliefs. And now in my adult
years, as a fairly rationally minded atheist, I can
easily see what harm and damage organised religions have
done, and are doing even today as we pass through the
almost enlightened year of 2000 C.E.
I now find it important in my middle age, to
express my atheistic thoughts, to an audience that may or
may not appear. It doesn’t really matter that I may
be the only person on the planet to read these electronic
pages, because what really matters is that my thoughts
have now been expressed. In some way, I am ‘getting
it off my chest’. I am sick of the bickering in
Northern Ireland, the disproportionate intrusion of
religion into secular life, fundamentalism, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Christianity, fatwahs’ (SP?), hostage-taking,
circumcision, churches, mosques, temples, faith-healing,
the second coming and a whole bunch of other religious
bunkum. What really makes me sick though - and this is
well documented - is that in the name of Christianity,
the religious hierarchy stifled any non-Christian view of
the world. This happened between (roughly) the years 300
and 1300 C.E. There were theocratic backed governments
and kingdoms, education was denied to all but the clergy,
autopsies were banned, and all of early European science
had to bow to the incorrect Christian conformity. This is
so sad. Just think, one thousand years of the dark ages.
It is about time that the religious leaders of Europe and
the middle-east held up their hands and proclaimed,
loudly, that their dogma, their history, their hierarchy,
their selfish, idiotic beliefs are the reason we are not
flying amongst the stars. That we still have disease,
that we have mass overpopulation. That starvation still
exists, and that slavery existed into the 19th century.
They should be so ashamed of their wasted one thousand
years that were forced, unconditionally, onto the fearful,
innocent public.
As far as my lack of belief is concerned,
common sense is my guide. In fact, I consider those who
still profess to believe in any sort of divine being to
be somewhat mentally ill. It seems incredible to me that
in this modern era, so many people throughout our planet
are still so easily led, coerced, misguided, cajoled and
conned by organised religion. Nevertheless, it is not
hard to see why so many people have their faith. Firstly,
the indoctrination of the very young - no one is born
with any form of religious belief whatsoever. The concept
of a divine being can only be taught, and obviously,
learned. That well quoted proverb has it in a nutshell -
‘Give me the child until the age of seven...’
secondly, the rewards of faith - be good within a
particular faith and you will somehow be alive after you
are dead - there’s no proof, just a glib promise.
You will be eternally happy, reunited with your loved
ones, free of pain or injury, bouncing around gleefully
on a cloud and strumming on a harp - for all eternity.
Some part of you will live on. This is a good deal; it
gives the gullible something nice to look forward to,
something to hang on to. Thirdly, the sense of community
- being in an organised religious group brings people
towards a common goal, be it Muslim fundamentalism,
Protestant/Catholic approved murder squads in Northern
Ireland, Christian fundamentalist anti-abortion protest
or the hijacked Mithra nativity play. In the fourth case,
some people have no choice of religion or even the option
of believing or not. The reality of subjugation, death,
humiliation and religiously inspired torture still looms
large over some fanatical, medieval Middle Eastern states.
Also, evidence is my teacher, as are thousands
of years of war, murder, rape and torture in the name of
religion. In another light, a total lack of real,
verifiable evidence for even the merest hint of anything
supernatural is also my teacher. I have no great
educational learning but I feel quite justified in saying
that my early education was really stunted by the fact
that I went to a Church of England school. Being taught
that the Lord Jesus will be nice to all the good little
children is not a rational substitute for real history.
It is but a matter of geography that the vast majority of
the religiously inclined believe in their personal gods.
For example, very few babies are born and indoctrinated
into Mormonism in the environs of Tehran, and no one got
up and proclaimed "There is no God but Allah, and
Mohammed is his prophet!" in any of the school
assemblies that I attended. In the same vein, it seems
really odd to me that if there really was a divine being
(choose your own flavour) floating around ‘up there’,
the belief in that god would be genetic. It would have
been so easy for a god to pass on religion, inbred
automatically, from generation to generation. There are
just too many errors in the various bibles. Most biblical
errors are catalogued and are easily available on the web,
so no need to bother any readers with them here. The same
can be said of all the unbelievable biblical claims.
I am wondering why are so many members of the
Christian clergy in the UK, a disproportionate above
average percentage, are tried and convicted child
molesters? Every few weeks in the British news media a
new case comes to light, and it is a trend that does not
appear to be diminishing - and these are only the
perverts who are actually discovered and caught. It
beggars belief. I doubt that there is anyone (apart
perhaps from the Christian clergy) who would doubt that
all paedophiles are, in fact, severely mentally ill. Why
are they like this? Is it something to do with their
religion? Is it their belief that they have a god given
ticket of forgiveness? Given the above, it is also true
that paedophiles reside on both sides of the religious
fence - Atheist perverts are also a reality - I have no
truck with either.
There are a few things that give me hope,
indeed I am getting a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. It
seems that religion, at least in the country where I
reside, is gradually taking a back seat. (Though there is
still no separation of church and state). The amount of
people who actually acknowledge to being believers in a
divine creature is on the decline, I have heard on the
radio (BBC Radio 4) that it is between 12.5% and 15% of
the population. The number of church going subjects is
falling substantially. In fact the media tells us that
there has been a 22% decline in church attendance in the
last 10 years, and that the overall regular churchgoing
figure in the United Kingdom is now under 10% (reported
as 7.5% in January 2000) of the general population. The
church going public is suffering a gradual increase in
average age - take a look at British religious TV
programming for proof of this. The youth of this country
are, for the most part, rejecting organised religion.
Even if we were to overestimate the reported number of
churchgoers in the United Kingdom, let’s say by
doubling them, it still means the United Kingdom is by no
means a religious country. In fact religious believers
would still be in a grossly weak minority. How
frustrating that level of belief is not shared by ‘the
Mother of Parliaments’. The Christian church in this
country is becoming divided in what it actually believes.
Be it the churches’ attitude towards homosexuality,
the acceptance of female priests or even the maverick
clergymen who profess to have no belief in God, there is
nothing quite like shooting yourself in the foot! For
example, even as I write, the representatives of 40
independent UK ‘Christian’ schools are battling
in the European Court of Human Rights for the right to
administer corporal punishment to their pupils. Anyone
who knows even a minuscule segment of Christian history
will be surprised that it isn’t capital punishment
that they are fighting for! It is yet another nail in
their rapidly disappearing coffin of Christian belief.
The World Wide Web enables almost instant
access to Atheistic and scientific information. With the
global communications revolution in the past two decades
it seems to me that even though the lunatic religious
fringe are getting their fair share of internet, radio
and television publicity, they are justly being taken for
what they are - crackpots. This I believe will ultimately
filter through to be the general perception of organised,
stable religions. Without the appearance of a divine
saviour scourging the planet of non-believers and sinners,
Christianity is surely going to find it more and more
difficult to hang onto their faithful followers. How long
do they have to wait for the reappearance of their Lord?
We should be told. Is it ten years, twenty, thousands,
millions? More? The religious fringe prophesies
concerning the end-of-the-world at the end of the 20th
century most certainly didn’t happen. One wonders
when those end-of-the-world protagonists will pop their
heads up again, though I doubt that if and when they do,
it will be to proclaim their inaccuracy in this instance.
Surprisingly, I do have something good to say
about religion! The music. (Don’t be too heartened -
see below). The Bach B-minor Mass, Gregorian plainchant,
Verdi’s Requiem, Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass,
Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and thousands of other
religiously inspired opuses - not divinely inspired I’m
sure, but definitely driven by western religious belief.
I do not include ‘happy clappy’ music in this
category, apart from it’s cultural sterility, it is
just another attempt to climb aboard the popular culture
bandwagon. They haven’t fooled me. I would rather
listen to ‘trad jazz’ than listen to the
offering hoisted up for British popular consumption
during the Xmas of 1999. It is beyond this writer's
understanding as to why anyone, sane or otherwise, would
deliberately go out and pay good money to listen to the
fetid excrement that was the ‘Lord’s prayer’
grunted, using a fake American accent, to the pentatonic
banality of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Let us now remind
the peddler of that childish garbage that his religion,
his own Holy Book, has something to say about camels and
the eyes of needles.
As for death? Well, I wasn’t around for
billions of years before I was born, and I won’t be
around for an even longer time after I die. I exist as an
electro-chemical being in the 21st century and my only
fear about death is in the manner in which I will cease
to exist.