Random Rant

I declared myself an atheist one night in the summer just before I turned 18. I wasn’t a particularly devout Christian by any means up to that point, but I know in my early teens I firmly believed in a god, even if it wasn’t necessarily Bible God ™. I’d read a great deal of the Roman, Greek and Norse myths (I loved the Hercules and Thor adventures) and could see the striking similarities. In my mind, there wasn’t anything special about what the Bible had to say about things, so I figured they all just followed a common theme and essentially told the same story.

But that night, hanging with my friends, I suddenly realized that I just didn’t believe in any god. No big tragedy had occurred, and I wasn’t “mad at God” by any means; I just could no longer play that game. My friends just thought it was attention-seeking rebellion, and perhaps it was to an extent. They tried to convince me that I was wrong; using unsophisticated versions of arguments I would later study in much greater detail. My rebuttals were equally unsophisticated, but were sufficient to convince me if not them.

Early on I waffled back and forth, and though I could never believe in Bible God again, I could see room for the possibility of some being we would call a god, perhaps. But the more I looked into it (thanks to the internet and the readily available information) the more I came to believe in no such thing. I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise if further evidence should come into play, but for now my default position is that there is no god.

I spent a lot of time and energy in the 90s and early 00s trying to convince believers in various online forums that they were wrong. It seemed important at the time, though I couldn’t even then have told you why. Fortunately (long story short) I matured, and no longer feel it’s necessary to do that. I’m happy to talk about why I don’t believe, but I don’t feel like I have to convince anybody else that their beliefs are wrong.

I’m all about “live and let live.” If you’re a consenting adult and aren’t hurting anyone else, do whatever you want as far as I’m concerned. On a personal level I may try to talk you out of doing something that may harm you, but ultimately you get to live your life, and I get to live mine. If someone makes decisions on how to live their life because of their holy book, it’s no skin off my nose as long as they aren’t harming anyone else.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are so arrogantly sure that their religion is the right one (and ONLY right one) that they aren’t content with it being the guiding principle of their own life. They want to make sure everyone else follows it too. From demanding that Creationism be taught alongside Evolution in science class as equally valid, to expressing outrage when some civic leader declines to give special priority to their holy book, these people are determined to use the law, if they’re allowed to, to make you follow their religion whether you’re a part of it or not. Of course they want you to believe as they do, but if they can’t get that they’re content with forcing you to pay lip service to it.

These people would deny a child the opportunity to grow up in a solid, loving home because they don’t want to allow same-sex couples to adopt. They prove their own hypocrisy when they condemn homosexuals for higher rates of promiscuity yet deny them the right to marry. Oh, they’ll throw out some dubious statistics to shore up their arguments, but basically their objections boil down to two things: it’s against their religious beliefs and they think it’s icky. Those are two excellent reasons for them to not engage in the behavior themselves, but not nearly sufficient for denying basic rights to a group of people.

I mean no offense to those believers who stay out of other peoples’ lives; I know a lot of people like that and I get along with them just fine. But I am truly baffled, and disgusted, by the other ones.