Unless you have been living on Mars you will have noticed the many new books on the subject of atheism that are available to anyone who cares to open their minds and read them. I thought it was apropos during the Atheist week on Facebook, in itself not an unimportant event, to post a few of my own thoughts on what is making the change to the way we think about life and the meaning of the universe, and our place in it.
I read this
blog post from a fellow atheist who has travelled down the road from Christian to non-believer and found that a lot of that story held true for myself. I would recommend spending a few minutes to give it a read as it is very interesting.
In all honesty I have wrestled with the concept of an omnipotent being for most of my life, moving from at some stages of extreme upset in my life - like the death of my father- of being a real theist, trying my damnedest to believe in the whole ten yards of the Bible, including the talking snake. More often than not I was more in the deist camp, where I was happy to believe in some cloud presence who didn't listen to your prayers but was responsible for the creation of the universe. It is the study of Biology as an interested amateur, which brought me into contact with the likes of
Richard Dawkins books.
These books started the ball rolling with getting me really thinking about the fundamentals of our existence and where we come from, and once you start down this road, the fables of the old testament suddenly appear as shabby and as nonsensical as they have always been, but now you can see them for what they are. I put his lack of initial clarity down to my very Christian upbringing, and having the King James Bible stuffed down my throat from a very early age. It was ironically during one of my theist periods that I actually read the book from cover to cover, and had my eyes really opened to the nonsense I was wading through in the old testament.
I felt for too many years that it was a topic that should not be discussed, as it was easier not to , and to just confirm to anyone who asked, that I didn't believe in Adam and Eve anymore, but there must be a cloud person somewhere. I don't think this now, and the internet has helped - after a considerable amount of reading - cement my beliefs and thinking. This is due to not just the pro-atheist posts but more importantly the Christian and Muslim posts, that get more desperate and extreme with every day that passes. Too many apologists for religion just can't see how bigoted and entrenched they have become, to the point they are happy to fly planes into buildings and kill thousands of innocent people. The sad truth is, if you read the old testament, there are plenty of examples of horrendous killings and slaughter if you don't worship the right burning bush or golden idol. They have been given a mandate by this two thousand year old book of ramblings and the middle eastern Arabs who dreamt it all up. We used to believe in Alchemy and Phrenology, yet anyone with a brain now laughs at these, why should religion be any different.
It is well worth the time and effort to visit
Pat Condell's site on youTube, not just to listen to his posts, which are interesting in themselves, but to watch the rebuttals , which in a lot of cases are even more illuminating.
With the many authors that you can now read on this subject and the easy access to the internet, there has never been a better time to question all of your beliefs and listen to and join the new age of reason.
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