i was asked by a cousin of my religious views. specifically if i still did not believe in (christian) god. i got her message overnight. i read it 15 minutes before i had to go to work, so i had been thinking about this for more than 6 hours.
it is definitely not all of what i believe, but it is what i came up with after sitting down and typing for a few hours. any longer and it would be a 7 or 8 page report on what exactly i believe.
oh yeah, the blog subtitle? i mean that.
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ok, here is my answer.
short answer- no i do not believe in god.
longer answer- i don't believe in the need for a god. i am comfortable in my decisions and i can live with the consequences either way. and why would i need to believe in a deity to do the right thing? why not just do the right thing because its the right thing? my moral sense is not in question here either. you don't need religion to be moral or religion to get morals. if this was the case, then the catholic church, one of the richest (and corrupt organizations in the world) would have made real reparations for knowingly enabling priests and others in that church to diddle little boys. or for denying the holocaust while it happened. or the crusades. i will not or cannot speak for you, but any organization which belittles and condemns women just for being female should not have any authority on what women can or cannot do. food for thought- there are more female residents of this house than there are in all of vatican city.
but that is just the catholics. i could go on about baptists or southern baptists too. megachurches are nothing more than a "my god is bigger than your god" contest. these pastors who claim to have the ear of god ask and beg for offerings from people who really can't afford to give offerings, all the while driving around in expensive automobiles with expensive suits flying around in private jets. plus in the (bully) pulpit they advocate not for ensuring that a community takes care of those who can't afford to, not for any sort of social justice, but that the gays are what is bringing down the country and they gays should be denied all sorts of rights, rights which black people were given first by constitutional mandate in 1865, and then codified into law in 1965. and it still isn't equal yet. what offends me is the jimmy swaggarts and jim bakkers and ted haggards of the world- pastors who advocate all sorts of moral policies because "gawd says its wrong", get caught doing those same actions, apologize, resume preaching those same policies, and keep doing the same things that got them in trouble in the first place. to be christian means that you follow this (no offense here) bullshit? no thank you.
this in fact has been the thing that really bothered me about the entire religion thing anyway when dealing with people. (i gots some issues with the deity as well, but i'm not going to go there unless you want me to.) if you follow this god person you should be trying to emulate his/her/its actions. that 8 and 9 year old kids could say they have accepted god into their lives in sunday school and then turn around and act as if they have no sense makes no sense. i say that not as a 27 year old saying that 8 and 9 year old kids don't really know what choices they are making and what they are getting themselves into, but as someone who was 8 and 9 years old sitting in sunday school and watching this happen. do you know what it is like when the sunday school teacher tells the others in the class that corey, who has not accepted christ into his life, is setting an example for them and that they, as those who have joined the church, should be setting an example for me? or that sunday school teachers have told me that they would have failed as teachers if they didn't get me to join by the time i had to move on?
is there a god? i don't know. i see no evidence that there is one. and if there is evidence for god or a god, this being knows what evidence it would take to convince me. i am agnostic on that issue. do i believe in the christian god? no. i am an atheist on that issue. do you believe in zeus, vishna, odin, thor, quetzalcoatl, or kukulkán? i doubt it. the difference between someone who holds the same views of gods as i do and your typical christian is that one in my position is just as atheist as a christian is towards all gods but one. who is to say that the muslims were the ones who got it right? or the jews? or the buddhists? it is not my place to say who is right or what is right.
this is why even though i hold no religious views, i do not (repeat I DO NOT) discourage anyone else from holding religious views, just as long as those views don't affect my life. i don't care if you feel compelled to pray prostrating yourself 5 times a day. i don't care if you feel compelled to confess to a pastor for your sins. i don't care if you feel compelled to wake up early in the morning and spend hours upon hours praising your god. really i don't. if it makes you happy and at peace, i am happy for you. i am however insulted and upset by people who insinuate that because i'm not religious (and when they say this, its code for christian) i have no moral authority or that i am inherantly evil because of this same lack of religion. i am no saying you are saying this, but i have been in places where it has been said, like at a secular awards banquet where religion was not ever brought up.
what does upset me is when religious people try to force their views on other people, including those who may not hold the same religious views through government. no alcohol sales on sunday is wrong. censorship of content is wrong. issuing license plates with "in god we trust" is wrong (while we're at it, get it off the currency and "under god" out of the pledge. they were put there during the red scare of the 1950s because people were afraid of the "godless commie bastards" infultrating the country and the government. its similar to the muslim scare going on right now with the anti-sharia laws springing up across the nation) i don't like pushy people irrespective of religion.
so that's a little of what i think, by far this is not a complete picture.
