Why You Don't Need God...

...if you happen to think like I do.

At the beginning of my remembered life, Sunday mornings were reserved for God and eventually Thursdays were set aside for Boy Scout meetings. My maternal grandparents had been heavily involved in Scouts, so my brother and I joining was an inevitability. In both cases, though, with both church and Scouting, I was unable to see the point of attending pretty early on. I found church boring. If I was learning anything, it was just about the contents of the Christian Bible. There were obvious and appreciable moral imperatives being tossed about, but certainly nothing that required faith to enact. With the Boy Scouts, I at least did learn some basic skills involving camping and survival training, but I felt no pride in being a Scout. Between the Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings, I was losing a day of life every week to organizations that were forced upon me. Thankfully I cut both of these off many years ago.

I never bothered to openly identify myself as a non-believer until high school. Class discussions occasionally bordered on personal religious ideals, and for some teachers I was the token atheist. While I don't mean to stereotype, the resulting open conversations in class ended up being me, with godless liberal ideas, versus the hardcore religious and some fairly hateful feelings toward gay neighbors ("I should be able to have a say on whether or not someone gay moves in next door to me."), crime reduction (can't remember specifics, but racism was common), and how to create world peace (god's love stopping war vs. love of a god starting wars). Due to the characters I had to interact with, I became an angry atheist. I wasn't into vandalism or public and personal attacks against religious people, but I definitely made fun of my religious friends for having religious beliefs. To me, it was a sign of stupidity. It was only later that I realized I didn't care about someone having religious beliefs unless they were evangelizing.

Accepting the people I love who are religious became more confusing as time went by. I think a lot of atheist and atheist-leaning agnostics have a hard time coming to terms with people who are wonderful save their religious affiliations. These are the same people with whom I had initially been slightly caustic in hopes that I could make them rethink their belief in a higher power just the slightest bit. I still didn't understand what part of them needed religion. Now, though, I am able to see a distinct difference between various types of religious people, and I understand why some people feel that being religious is acceptable.

I recommend you watch this whole video:

(Note: Neil deGrasse Tyson has lots of fantastic videos in various places on the web, and I recommend any and all of them.)

Now, considering what I am against is both organized religion AND the idea of faith, I would gladly accept the label "agnostic" or "agnostic atheist". I have no beliefs until there is proof. This is a bit of a difference from how most people would identify me if asked, and that's because I tend to identify myself as an atheist even if that isn't the case. I think the reason for that is it's more of a shock for the naive if I say I'm an atheist as opposed to undecided. I've read numerous accounts online of the surprised reactions of religious acquaintances when a nice person reveals himself or herself as an atheist. The typical reaction? "But you're such a nice person!" Sigh.

After seeing the above video, I think there's something to be said for filling the unknown with the imaginary, but I see no excuse for a belief that some sort of omniscient and omnipotent being oversees daily life. There is a huge gap between questions we've asked and questions we have yet to ask about our universe. As far as questions we have asked, there's a huge gap between ones we've answered and ones we haven't. Somewhere in the quest to feel a sense of community and fill these gaps, groups of people have decided to overwrite answers where they have no right to. Groups that believe the world is flat and 6,000 years old need to rethink their priorities. I know intelligent and loving people who are religious regardless, and I've realized that it's just because they are one of a very common sort of person. My only wish is that more religious people would be like them.

The world is changing, though. As the generations roll over, the American population is becoming less homophobic, less religious, and more distant from other antiquated feelings. This is one of the few things that would give me hope for the future if I knew what hoping felt like.