by Luther Reads
I would not waste two minutes of my precious time on Earth writing about why I don't believe in the tooth fairy, unless of course I found myself surrounded by friends and family who do, and if I myself had once believed in this fairy well into adulthood. That is the situation I find myself in with the Christian god, and so here I am, writing about why I'm an Atheist.
This might surprise you, but I make no claim about the existence or non-existence of God, so in this regard I am an agnostic. But I do not pray to the Christian god, I do not seek the Bible for moral guidance, and I do not pursue a relationship with him using the enigmatic process provided by Christianity. So in this regard, I am an atheist.
A friend of mine once told me that he heard God talking to him in his car. I actually believe that he heard a voice, but I also believe that there was no voice. I now recognize that our vision, hearing, imagination, feelings, hopes and memories can alter our perception of an experience to fit a preconceived narrative, such as the superiority of a certain race or the presence of a certain god. Any Christian who thinks this isn't possible expresses a fundamental misunderstanding about how the human mind works, and must explain the experiences of billions of people, both past and present, who have interacted with non-Christian gods.
If we agree that the mind can play these kinds of tricks, even on large groups of people, then Christianity needs to teach believers how to differentiate between what is imagined and what is indeed supernaturally sourced. When praying, what process can be used to determine when God is speaking, and when our own subconscious and imagination are at work? Which Bible interpretations have been influenced by biases and traditions, and which haven't? What tool did the Biblical authors use to separate their own biases, desires and imagination from what they claimed to have been told by God? In my last days as a Christian, I asked pastors, friends and relatives about their own communication with God, and found neither consistency nor clarity. Everyone's process and understanding was different, and all seemed based on ambiguous feelings.
Without a reliable tool or process, I lost confidence in my own ability to distinguish between what I imagined that God would say, and what God may actually have been saying. I lost confidence in everyone's ability to do this correctly. When the preacher says, "God told me to tell you...," I found it necessary to first be convinced of how he heard from God before I could accept what he heard.
Prayer and Bible study are the primary ways that Christians hear from their god, and I was taught that the Bible must be read with real-time interpretive guidance from God in spirit form. If this is God's plan, to communicate with us telepathically while never being seen or heard in an evident way, and if he didn't give us a reliable tool of discernment, then the vast number of God-believing and Bible-based churches in disagreement with each other should have been fully expected. Suicidal cults are inevitable, men will continue to strap bombs to themselves and blow up buildings, the sick will continue flocking to unscrupulous faith healers, church goers will continue "sowing a seed" by putting their rent money in the offering plate, homosexuals will continue to get shunned by their own parents -- all based on what people believe in their heart to be the voice of God. If there is no way to decipher what is God and what is not God, those who are gullible and impressionable do not stand a chance. And guess what... allllllll of us are gullible and impressionable.
Truth cannot be reliably discerned through this process, facts cannot be verified, and disagreements cannot be settled between two individuals who both claim to have heard from God. If this nebulous plan is the best that a omnipotent and omniscient God can do, then I'm not interested in him, even if he is real. I would rather put my trust and belief in things that can be collectively seen and verified. I would rather derive my hope, joy, peace of mind, and purpose from what is evident to people, regardless of their ethnic or cultural background, religious upbringing or beliefs.
Oh, and I really like saying goddamit!
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About the Author:
Luther Reads is not the most interesting man in the world, but he is one of the most curious.
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