Okay, here it is... I'm going to try and be civil. I am going to be nice. I won't say too many mean things. I promise.
Okay, well, let's jump right in.
I'm an atheist. If you know me at all or if you scroll through my wall on Facebook or have stumbled upon my comments on YouTube or *rambling trailing off into the distance* then you'd know exactly what my stance on religion is. I really, really don't like it. I make it a point to never capitalise the g in god. I think if he did exist, from what we know about him, he's a murderous sociopath with a weird fetish for dead infants.
Should I say why? I'm going to say why. Feel free to skim. I'll tell you, from the beginning, why I fucking hate religion so much...
Let's start with a younger version of myself. Well, I went to christian schools all my life. Went to Sunday School as a kid, had a colourful copy of My First Bible, and my parents kept true to the faith. I remember at some point deciding or agreeing with someone that the bible is just filled with good stories. They didn't necessarily have to be true but I did believe that there was a god, and I prayed. The first time I really started questioning was when I met an atheist. Suddenly I was aware that not everyone believed in the same thing I did. So my question was, and since we moved around a lot, do good people go to heaven, or do believers go to heaven? I feel that should have been easy enough to tell a child. But no... A lot of people said only believers would... Which made me think, hang on, but I know really good people who aren't believers... I remember this Muslim kid I was friends with as a child, and he was a real stand up guy... I couldn't believe that he would eternally burn for just being a little different than me... So when people told me good people go to heaven, I was more inclined to believe them... But why didn't everyone believe that? I've come to realise in my later years that this is how Christianity has actually kept going on for so long... It's not a religion that only bullies it's believers... It convinces it's believers that they're actually helping people by telling them they'll have infinite punishment for not believing in the same thing they do... With what war propaganda being what it was, I mean, I was so surprised that no one else figured that maybe, just maybe, something here is fucked up. But back to Mini-Matty. I was rather transfixed on it all... I had a good voice, I liked to sing, and Church was a place that I could do that. I didn't really care what I was saying... I just liked singing. I also liked the fun activity books and the colouring in. Of course, you're a kid, these things are important, and fun, and you want to be a part of that. After a while though, the moving got so hectic that we sort of stopped going to church. We wouldn't stay long enough anyway. So I still believed. To this day we still pray before we eat. But my dad would put jazz or gospel on, on a Sunday afternoon... That was his "church" for a while. I remember wanting the album Demon Days by Gorillaz so badly, but my dad wouldn't buy it for me... To this day, it is still one of my favourite albums. Great tracks, and I mean, the smash hit Feel Good Inc. is on there, one of the first bass lines I learned. This when it started to bug me, I think. Coming to my pre-teen years, I watched a lot of television. I remember in Lydenberg, my closest friends were two homeschooled children a bit younger than men, but their parents were... Well... Suffocating. They weren't allowed to watch half the programs I watched. This was around the time Animax started. I got into Magister Negi Magi Negima, .//Hack, Black Cat, Eureka 7, Neon Genesis Evangelion... Great freaking shows. Those kids weren't even allowed to watch Fairly Odd Parents. Witchcraft and all that. No Disney, nothing. I mean, we're millennials. We got raised on television and the late 2000s boom of everything awesome on the internet. But no, traditional parents, traditional kids. I was frustrated because I had no one to share my favourite things with. We eventually moved, again... But I was distanced from religion by now... It started making less and less sense... What was it about singing and having fun that made adults so scared of a few animated drawings and Harry Potter? So then came highschool. In this private Christian institution, we were sort of forced every Friday to do hymn singing... By forced, I meant it was easier to just sit through it and mumble through the songs than to get into a fight with the teachers or get detention on a weekly basis. I watched Paranormal Activity for the first time here... It was scary as hell! I mean, I thought this kind of thing could actually happen to me! I had nightmares for three days! And then, when I didn't die at 4AM the fourth night, I started realising, that whoops, nothing was coming for me, that demons aren't real. They're not outside, or under your bed waiting for you... I think I started to realise where the demons really where *points to own head*. But I still believed... Hell, I even let a guy talk me into going on a youth camp. I mean, camp it was going to be fun! This I think was becoming a turning point. At this age, you become more sexually aware of yourself. You start feeling really guilty about things you shouldn't. Natural things. And I somehow thought that being a normal teenage a boy who perved on girls and had a bit of alone time every so often would get me sent to the eternal slammer. Jesus H Christ (Google what the H stands for, it'll make your day, I promise). So I really did feel bullied by this institution that was claiming to be helping people. I never got to explore my sexuality. I was afraid. So on this camp, which was a good camp, don't get me wrong, I sort of came out with this renewed faith in God, who I didn't really feel was there at the time but I sort of just went along with it. I remember one of my best friends saying he didn't believe in Hell... And fuck, it's probably one of the most sensible things anyone at that age could say. He got a lot of flack for it, but I respected him for saying that. You know, one of the phrases I've always hated the most was god-fearing. Something inside me always got a little angry when someone called themselves or someone else that. Anyway, a few heartbreaks later, and as it happens in highschool, I started becoming clinically depressed. Here, I was at my lowest. I needed help. No one was giving it to me. Not my parents, not any higher power... My friends were about all I had... My friends, my shows, and my music. Otherwise, I was alone. And when I was alone, the thoughts started getting scarier. And when nothing came, no angels came down to save me or tell me everything was okay, hell a fucking breeze moving the curtain might have even been enough, nothing happened. Ding. Click. Maybe, just maybe, I was insignificant to the man with the beard and the robes. Okay... So this is when it started. I declared myself agnostic. It's safe, no one judges you, and it's like being godless with benefits. A sort of, "I'll worry about it later". As it turned out, a lot of people I knew had come very scarily close to offing themselves. This confirmed my belief that there is no one really looking out for us... I became aware of just how alone in the universe we really were... And this was it. One night, I thought, what would not existing feel like... What would death feel like? A dreamless sleep implies you wake up... Just, what if, what if EVERYTHING I was taught is wrong? It felt cold.
The closest thing I can compare it to is... Not being able to hear, smell, see or taste anything. Like being underwater, except... Silence. Nothing. Nothing that stretches on forever. Blackness... Black is really fitting, because it's just darkness, the absence of light. That's what death was like. Absence. You're absent. Everything is absent. Because you end, you literally stop existing.
And I found a word for that. Oblivion. Nothing. Not the peaceful kind... Yes, there is no hurt, no pain, no heartbreak, no fear, no anxiety... But there's no happiness. Nothing. It's almost cold, but you wouldn't feel it.
It was fucking scary.
All that happened in the space of about twenty seconds. To this day, I sometimes picture it and I can't stay there for more than a few seconds. This is the reality of death. It's final. You end there. Everything really ends there. That's the destiny of every man and woman and everyone in between.... You will die. There is no escaping that reality. And if it's anything like what I picture, you suddenly see why immortality becomes... Desirable. This was when I think I finally understood why people stayed in religious institutions... The alternative is now way to live. It literally makes you into a nihilist. "Like roses, we blossom, then die."
That's all there is...
And it was scary. I lived with this for a while, because, this made sense. This is what it was all about, really... Our own mortality. Man fears his own mortality, which is why he thinks of ways to survive his own death. And suddenly, that was the only thing I truly saw in Christianity... A lie we tell ourselves so we can keep on living, a promise of surviving death so we don't lose hope.
And then I read the damndest thing by Mark Twain.
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
I laughed. I had a day of actual peace. A night of sleep. It fit right in there... You're dead for so long, and when you finally get the chance to live, why waste it on inventing cheap ways of comforting yourself about dying again? Why cheapen the whole universe that way? We're a bunch of talking monkeys flying through the universe on an organic spaceship, I feel like all of that wonder and beauty is enough for me, this whole world, this solar system, this planet, this continent, this country... This person that I am now... This is enough for me. I wanna live. While I still have the chance... See, absurdism sort of says that it's pointless to try and find your purpose because you can never know it... But there is a branch of existentialism that says, you don't have any purpose really. You have to create it. You will live and you will die. That's all that's certain. I remember a quote from Mahatma Gandhi that says "Whatever you do in life will be insignificant. but it is very important that you do it". And this also made sense to me. You are born, and then you die. Whatever is in between is yours. It's weird but, I know I'm insignificant to the universe, but to myself, to the people around me, I matter. Nothing I do matters because the thing is, I will die. Being a good person won't make dying any better. Being a bad person won't make dying any worse. Death is unbiased, and equal, and indiscriminate, and about as fair and forgiving as they come. But while I'm here, I know because I have empathy and sympathy for fellow human beings, that you don't fuck with people. We're all on the same journey, headed towards death. This is why suicide scares the shit out of me. That someone would choose to snuff themselves out... Whether they live on in the memories of other's is inconsequential, it's just a small comfort as your heart stops beating. And I've almost been that person, so many times.
So I came out as an Atheist. Loud and proud. Sometimes militant, mostly philosophical.
And did it cause a shitstorm.
My mom got friend requests from aunts and uncles who wanted to pray for me, people unfriended me on Facebook, I mean, now I mean, family gatherings are a nightmare because I don't want to outright come out and say "Listen, I think everything you've said in the last thirty minutes is absolute fucking bullshit." but keeping quiet gives people the wrong impression as well. I'm not quiet. I'm considerate, really.
I bear no ill will to anyone of faith, if it gets you to sleep at night, whatever. But listen here.
If your faith causes you to be homophobic, transphobic, bigoted, ignorant, sexist, racist, if your faith causes yourself or the people you come in contact with more harm than good, then understand, I have a problem with it. It's a cancer. You don't hate the patient, you hate the disease. And you have one that's rotting your whole fucking core.
Don't even get me started in violence in the name of a deity. Don't get me started in the hatred religion spawns, on the politics of the church and the walls it creates between people, this institution is fucking sick. And it makes money off being fucking sick, that's the worst part.
But I am also someone who has faith in the human race. We have this incredible capability for doing good. At some point, religion is going to die out. It should. Listening to today's kids, to the youth, we're more progressive than ever, we're accepting, and open minded and not blindly following an ancient book written by sexually frustrated old desert dwellers.
Those are my views on religion. I think it's a disease. It's poisonous. And sad, actually. But I will admit, there were times I was happy being called a sheep. I know why people believe. But I also know why I don't. And every so often I like to hear Richard Dawkins or Bill Nye and sometimes even Niel DeGrasse Tyson spell out some truths, put forward arguments, and honestly, listening to fellow atheists is probably the only reason I haven't gone insane yet...
There is one religion I do have a soft spot for, and that is... Hold your breath...
Laveyan Satanism.
Weird hey? But, the more I read about them, the more I understand. It's like, taking anti-theism to an extreme. Because, funny enough, they want nothing to do with biblical Satan. They use the original meaning of Satan, which means adversary. It's a religion founded upon being opposed to religion, or conventional religion. I've met these people, and they were nice, and friendly, and they put forward good arguments... I mean, I have read their bible and it's... Incredibly logical, sarcastic, very involved... It's almost more philosophy than anything else, and I find it... Incredible. Just... The fact that such a huge misconception exists, that there is such irony... Like, you always see Satanists as these sacrificial nutjobs but... They aren't. They're nice people with logical believes. I also have less hatred for Paganistic practices, I mean I do think a lot of it is bullshit, but there is some value in viewing nature and the Earth as sacred.
But yeah. That is what I believe. I don't have time to be preached to, I'm losing breaths and heartbeats and seconds that I will never get back. I guess I barely even have time to explain... But, This is about as close as I can give you. I remember there were these two kids in primary school, and when we played pretend, they always wanted to be girls... And I wish my parents taught me then what I know now. But didn't know what I know. And I think that transphobia and homophobia were instilled in me at a very young age, because I didn't understand it, and I remember my friends at the time being bullies... I was one of those people. I could have killed someone, indirectly. But these conservative ideals that come with religion are... Dangerous.
So yeah, that was day 4, peace out, we'll talk again tomorrow, hopefully with something more lighthearted. If perchance, I have offended, think but this, and all is mended... We might as well be ten minutes back in time for all you'll change your mind.
