I believe I am an atheist and I wrote before that that word �atheist� sounds so scary. Like a �sin�, as I was sort of taught from school, peers, TV, community. My parents are two seperate religions, my dad is Catholic and my mom is United (?). But since my mom was not Catholic, they would not allow them to be married in a Catholic church in the town where we live (this was before I was born) and where all their family and friends were. This is one reason why a part of me despises the Catholic church, for their strict, unnecessary and �oh, thou holy� rules. Because of this my parents never attended church and when they had us, we didn�t go either. So I didn�t grow up going to church, I have no religion and no religious background. I am not baptized (and I was told because of this, I was going straight to hell.. wow their God seems so very merciful). As a child, I had a few religious friends but I never felt the pressure of religion to the point of facing my faith and finding out what I believed. I just had some friends who happened to go to church and I didn�t. And whenever I did (say if i slept over at their house), I felt out of place and confused by all the �cultish� ranting and listening to some stranger tell me what God is saying to him and to us. I wondered where he got this stuff and if they taught it to him in �priest university�.
When I went to high school and religion got more evident, I began to question what I believed. I always knew I never believed in church or in the rules of religion, but I sometimes made myself believe in a God. Why? .. today, I don�t know. Maybe I wanted to believe because �everyone else� believed and it was the �cool� thing, sounds dumb now, but it was high school. Maybe I wanted a crutch as well, something to put my trust in when my confidence was low or someone to toss my troubles on when things got too heavy. Which is what I believe sometimes that people use religion as, as a crutch.. Anyways, back to high school, Christian Ethics classes always made me ask why? why are all these people placing their entire lives into something that they don�t even know exists? Into something that logically doesn�t make sense.. People will answer, �Well I know that God exists, I feel it, I believe it.� But why? Do these people ever question their faith and ask the all important question, why? Why did I start believing? What keeps me believing? Why do I base my life around this one thing? Why do I judge others because of it? Without religion, would we judge each other at all? Because what would we have to base our judgments on? I realized that I don�t believe in God, because I just don�t. I think I�ve been forcing myself to believe for so long for security�s sake but now I feel ok and not alone, and not needing of a security that exists in the mind to comfort our bleak and meaningless world. I am comfortable with this bleak and meaningless world.. Ha.. it�s not really that bad, in fact it�s pretty good..
But only recently have I met other people who outright state they are atheists. This isn�t a comfort to me.. I still feel alone in my beliefs and maybe that�s why people choose to believe. Because it makes them feel less alone. And don�t get me wrong, I don�t mean to judge those that believe, I just don�t really understand them and sort of wish they would educate me. Though I think that approaching the subject is sometimes hard to do without offending people. I try not to, but I think I do sometimes.
We learned in our high school Biology class about creation and evolution and all that jazz and it made me think logically about evolution and not about creation. I like to figure out something and not base it entirely on a belief in one thing. That statement didn�t make sense.. oh well.. I really want to know why people can believe so deeply in something? I mean I know people that choose their friends based on religious beliefs or choose a boyfriend/girlfriend based on this as well. My question is, why limit yourself? So your belief in God or whatever religion may be stopping you from falling in love and actually finding your soulmate. Also stemming from this, does your involvement in religion vary or can it? I mean can you be a hardcore Christian (following all the rules, NO premarital sex, church every Sunday and more), a semi-Christian (some rules, premarital sex, sometimes church), a sort of Christian (a couple of beliefs, premartial sex with more than one person--i don�t mean at the same time..as in threesomes..etc.--, hardly ever church) or a combo of all of these (and of course, these are not set categories - I was just generalizing). What I don�t understand is why some people read the Bible, say they believe in God, yet they feel extremely comfortable having sex before marriage or committing infidelity or swearing. Do they truly believe then or do they just not believe in all the rules? And if you�re gonna say you believe, shouldn�t you believe fully? If you believe in God, why don�t you believe in the rules that his religion sets for you? I know I don�t believe because I choose not to follow the rules. I thoroughly enjoy premarital sex without feeling guilty, I can�t go to church, I don�t believe your �sins� can be wiped clean by apologizing through prayer. People take advantage of religion. They use it to get out of situations or as an excuse for their behaviour. But don�t get me wrong, not everyone. But some people do. Religion confuses me because I just don�t understand and maybe if I asked people, I�d learn why they think the way they do. But anyways this has been my religious rant and I�d love some feedback so write me and tell me what you believe and why you do or don�t. I promise I won�t judge you but be prepared to ask yourself, why? If you�re not too afraid, that is...