This was originally posted on my Myspace blog on April 10, 2006. I am not really sure why I felt the need to repost it over here, but I have and that is that. Maybe I just need some filler. I have not made any edits to the original text, although I feel that I probably should, but we will leave it to stand as what it is.

Last night I went to my father’s church for their “Easter Cantata”. I am by no means a religious person; I merely went in support of my father for his portrayal of Marcus in their musical drama. Once upon a time, I used to be a church goer. I did not go because I wanted to, but because my parents went and I had to go where they went on Sundays. I never had a flash of revelation while in church, nor did I ever have any of the blind faith necessary to be a true member. The historical side was always something of great interest and I thourghly enjoyed hereing the stories. I was even forced into going to church camp one year when I was a child. Now that was a hoot. Every morning we had a period for silent prayer where we would go off by ourselves for a half-hour every morning and contemplate. I spent most of my time popping the heads off dandelions by making “guns” out of them. I used to always stylize myself as an agnostic, but I now feel that I am truly an atheist. There is not a higher power of any kind. If your views disagree with mine, well, then that is your opinion and you are entitled to it. I believe that this is still a free country as far as religion is concerned.

Why have I decided that I am an atheist? Well, I have always been a follower of the Scientific Method and am in posession of, what I hope is, a fairly analytical mind. It is kind of funny, but one thing that helped jumpstart this was an episode of Moral Orel (Omnipresence) I saw recently. While in school Orel makes the comment that with god, there is no place for facts. How true this statement is. Coupled with some of the reading I have been doing lately, most notably The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams (a self described radical atheist), have led me to rethink my stance on religion and a higher power. When one tries to apply the scientific method to the so called facts out of the bible it just does not work. In many ways it goes back to “the chicken or the egg”. At least from a creationist standpoint. Supposedly god is was and always will be. How can that be? Everything comes from something and therefore if there were a god he must have come from something as well. So, what created god? And then what created the being that created god? Where does it all end? How is something like this possible? Currently, one of the most generally accepted theories about the creation of the universe is The Big Bang. In my own personal opinion String Theory might be better able to define what caused our universe to come into existence, but currently we do not have the technology to test this. I find it extremely humrous that Pope John Paul II somehow melded The Bing Bang Theory as being mutual inclusive with creationism. How can a god have existed before there was anything? Where exactly was this so called supreme being? Here we go back to the chicken or the egg, and we already covered that. So, where exactly did this idea of a supreme being(s) come from? Well, as a matter of pure conjecture, early man probably took a look around the world he was living in and began to wonder what caused things to happen. Why do the rains come? Why does lightning stike a tree? Having recently learned how to better adapt to his environment and change somethings to how he wanted them, he must have figured that there was another being providing these other items for him. Someone not a lot unlike himself, but obviously more powerful than him. The supreme being(s) were born. Sort of. Early man obviously would not possess a mind keen enough to actually define this in an extremely abstract cocept, therefore he built idols. Images to define what his view of the supreme being(s) looked like. This grew over the years into the polytheistic religions we know best. Greek, Roman, Norse, Hindu. And then along comes christianity with its monotheistic view. If you would like an interesting look at how we got from the Sumerian religion to christianity I highly suggest reading Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash. While a work of fiction the research regarding Sumerians and the birth of Judaism and eventually christianity are all factual, thought it does contain a good bit of specualtion on his part.

So, here we are now back to christianity once again. Since we do live in the western hemisphere and it is the predominate religion, one does have to wonder how it is that so many people became christian? Such a simple answer. Roman Emperor Constantine I decided that the Roman empire was christian after he had a revelation in 312AD. In 325AD he attempted to put a stop to persecution of christians to allow the religion to spread more freely. In essence, Constantine declared that the Roman empire would be henceforth christian. Then, they voted on what would go into the bible. Picked the best books and put them into as orderly of a format as they possibly could. Let us take a look at the bible for a minute here. Originally written in Aramic. Translated into Greek. Translated from Greek into Latin. Translated from Latin into the vulgar language of the Angles. Now, with all these translations what is the possiblity that something might have gotten lost in the translation? Never mind the fact that the first occurence of the new testament in print wasn’t even until 1516AD. How about that? The first recorded formalization of the bible was only about 500 years ago. Kind of makes it hard to believe that what is in it is true, doesn’t it? I will admit that the bible does contain very good moral lessons. Some good words to live by if you will. But being the basis of this massive religious movement? Well, if you ask me, christianity itself didn’t become extremely big until the Dark Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire. Seems like a good way to placate the ignorant masses doesn’t it? Do what your told. Slave your life away. Don’t get out of line. Enjoy everlasting joy when you die from your weak pathetic life. Sure, gives you something to look forward to after only 25 or so years of life.

So, in conclusion, why would some supreme being create this entire universe for one sect of one species on this tiny little insignificant planet in the spiral arm of a medium sized galaxy in the middle of nowhere? Seems pretty far fetched, doesn’t it?