What Kind Of Parent Would God Be?

Unconditional love is one of the things we expect of a loving parent. We expect them to love us no matter how badly we fuck up. We do not expect them to abandon us or punish us excessively for our failings. We do not expect them to brutalize and abuse us for our character flaws or even our disobedience. Patience and understanding are two of the qualities we consider to be the primary virtues of a good and loving parent. So what would Jesus do with a disobedient child? What kind of parent would God be?

God condemns his children to eternal torment in hell for disobeying him. He demanded the crucifixion of his own son as some sort of vicarious punishment for the disobedience of his other creations. WTF? What kind of barbaric asshole would torture one child because of the failings of another? What kind of parent would torture any of his children? A very, very bad one. The type that should never have children and should have all of their children immediately removed and themselves sterilized.

When my first child was born I asked myself if I was ready to give of myself unconditionally, expecting nothing in return, not even gratitude. Because gratitude is something that children learn. They aren't born with it. Children think it is your job and your duty as a parent to give them the things they need and want. They will tell you that you aren't their friend anymore because you don't buy them something they wanted. They may even tell you they hate you. But we love them still. That's what a good parent does. But what would God do? What does the bible have to say about unconditional love?

Out of one side of Jesus's mouth he talks about God's love and out of the other his Wrath. God sends you to eternal torment for not loving and worshipping him. He threatens rather than advises. Punishes rather than corrects. And his punsihments are neverending.

If my son or daughter asks me a question I try to answer it to the best of my ability. If they need advice I give it. If they need a shoulder to cry on or just a hug I give it. God is silent. God answers no questions. Gives no hugs or comfort. Says no soothing words. Offers no consolation. Tell me what God has said to you about the guy who cheated on you with your best friend? Tell me what he says about losing your house to foreclosure? About the loss of a job? The death of a loved one? Not what the bible says. What did God say to you personally? What kind of father would I be if my son or daughters wanted my advice or to hear some comforting words from me and I just pointed them to a book without uttering a word?

God is the ultimate absentee father. So why do we call this deadbeat dad perfect? God would have his kids taken away by Child Protective Services were he human. Aren't we the lucky ones that this bum does not exist? That question was rhetorical. I know the answer and so do you.

Tomorrow (First published 10/21/08 on Words of Wrath)

I have, at long last, discovered the meaning of life. It is not anything as lofty or poetic as living to do the will of some omnipotent deity or to go to paradise after you die. It is not as ideological as living for the betterment of humanity or to build an enduring legacy. It is very simple, very basic, and true of all of us but I will try my best to make it sound poetic and grandiose.

I have often said that we must strive to find the meaning of life because existence demands a toll from us in blood, sweat, and tears, stress and anxiety, sorrow and pain, and therefore we must ask the value of that which we suffer so dearly to maintain. It must be valuable enough to justify all the distress, fear, anxiety, and dissapointment we suffer in order to continue inhaling and exhaling day after day and year after year, struggling to acquire the commodities of existence. I have said this and because of these statements I have exhausted myself in search of some grand prize when all along the answer lay within me. All I had to do was imagine killing myself and think of the very reasons that I resist the notion, the same reasons that we all resist self destruction. Curiosity. Hope. We all want to see tomorrow out of sheer curiosity and hope for a better tomorrow. We are gamblers betting that the next hand will be the jackpot. It is the mystery of what tomorrow may bring that motivates us to keep moving forward. Why do we live? The answer is simple. To see another day. To see tomorrow.

When you imagine terminating your existence you think about how you will miss your friends or your family and how you won't see your kids grow up or your grandkids be born or the results of all your efforts or how the world will change and move on without you. You don't do it because tomorrow might be better than today. Religion fulfills this by giving you hope that there might be other tomorrows in the afterlife. But where there is no curiosity the will to live is defeated. Certainty is the cause of all suicide.

That seems like an extreme statement but look at it objectively. From religious martyrs to the clinically depressed to the hero who lays down his life for his country, without certainty they would find themselves unable to defeat the will to live which, as I have stated, is little more than curiosity about and hope for tomorrow. The suicide believes that tomorrow will be the same or worse than today. They are certain that their pain will never end. That they will never find happiness. There is no curiosity or hope. There is certainty that life is hopeless. The religious martyr is certain of heaven. He is certain that he will enter paradise, spend eternity with God, get his 72 virgins. The hero who faces death without fear is certain that his story will be told. He is certain that his legend will endure or that he too will go to heaven. He is certain that without his sacrifice the war would be lost and his loved ones would suffer. True, many heroes die in battle without martyring themselves and they are no less heroes but I am not talking about those who expect to survive and die fighting for their last breath. I am talking about those who willing throw themselves on the grenade certain that their sacrifice will not be in vain.

I, like all of you, wake up every day hoping for a better day and often fearful that the day will be worse, but as long as there is hope that the day will be better, that the future will be brighter, I have to keep going. I want to write the next book and see if this will be the one that wins awards and becomes a bestseller. I want to see if I ever attain that spark of entrepeneurial genius that will make me independently wealthy. I want to see if my son and my daughters will grow up to be happy, healthy, and successful. I want to see the culmination of all of my efforts. I want to live to see new scientific discoveries and the advancement of technology. I want to see how far society progresses, if we solve global warming, world hunger, world peace, renewable energy. I want to hear the new music trends, see the new fashion trends. Hell, I want to see who wins the next big prize-fight. I want to see tomorrow and that's the reason I suffer and struggle through vexations and dissapointments and boredom and pain to see the sun rise each morning. That's why we all live, for that one simple reason, to see tomorrow.

That Loving Feeling ( First posted 11/29/08 on Words of Wrath)

Faith is a very emotional thing. Despite the attempts by Christian apologists to do so, it really cannot be logically defended. The practice of believing without evidence and against all contradictory evidence, really is the antithesis of scientific investigation based on logic, reason, and empirical evidence. In that regard, it is very similar to other often irrational emotional responses like trust and love. As such, it is just as easily misled, just as easily twisted and deceived and abused, and just as often wrong. Still, for many, the answer to the question of "Why do you believe?" is a simple one.

Because I can feel God's love. I know God is there because I have felt his presence in my life.

In the end, after all the arguments have been made, all the evidence and clever analogies presented, and all the counter-arguments refuted, many believers will fall back on the one thing it is believed that logic cannot assail, their own subjective feelings and experiences,

I know there is a God because I have felt him there when I needed him. I have felt God's love when I was at my lowest and it gave me the strength to survive.

I'm sure we have all heard some version of this argument. Usually, the discussion ends right there. This is the part of the discussion over which logic and reason are assumed to hold no sway. How can you argue with some one's feelings? But don't we do just that all the time? Don't we argue with the woman who feels that her abusive husband really loves her? Wouldn't we argue with the child who felt in his heart that he was worthless and would never amount to anything? Wouldn't we argue with the aging fighter who had already begun to slur his words, suffering the first signs of pugilistic dementia, who still believed with all his heart and soul that he could be champion again? Would we accept as evidence of truth, the feelings of a teen aged couple who believed that they were destined to be in love for ever because they could feel the love burning in their chests more powerfully and passionately than even the most pious and devout believer? Or would we instead believe that they were mistaken, that their feelings were wrong, that they would fall in and out of love many times in their lives and that what they were feeling now was no evidence of anything real or eternal. Wouldn't we argue with and eventually seek therapy for a person if they believed that a celebrity they had never met was secretly in love with them and that they had a personal relationship with this celebrity, a bond that no one else would understand, because they could feel this celebrity's love so powerfully they knew it had to be real? Why are their feelings any less real or valid than the person who believes that they have a personal relationship with God because they can feel God's love?

In any church you will find cynical men and women who have lost all faith in romantic love and have instead turned to the love of God to replace what they could not find in their fellow human beings. It is surprising that those very same individuals who have grown the most skeptical of human love still embrace this nebulous feeling of "Divine love" with absolute unquestioning certainty. It is so surprising because we find so many reasons, and often rightly so, to doubt the love of those physically present in our lives.

We question the love of the women who bare us children, cook our meals, help us pay the bills and sometimes support us financially when we are unable to support ourselves or leave the work place to take care of our homes, nurse us when we are sick, embrace us when we are sad, reassure us when we are uncertain, laughs with us and makes love to us. Yet the God who has never held us in his arms, who has never spoken kind words to us and reassured us when we were feeling weak and uncertain, whose voice we have never even heard, his love goes unquestioned. Does this make sense?

Often, we find that we were correct to question the love of the women in our lives. We find that the love we thought we had, had long died, or been taken by another, or had never been present at all. Despite the love we thought we felt coming from them, it had all been a lie.

Women question the love of the man who physically protects and provides for them and their children, who pledges that he would die for them, who listens to their woes and provides them a strong shoulder to cry on and a few words of assurance, who struggles beside them and for them, removing obstacles from their path, and often they are right for being cautious and suspicious. This same loving man often reveals himself to be unfaithful, abusive, lazy, selfish, and unloving.

How often has a woman believed that a man loved them who was only after casual sex? If you asked them they would swear that the man really loved them right up until the phone stopped ringing or they caught him with other women. When they cry to you about him, how often do they tell you how clearly they had felt his love, and how they had felt certain that the two of them would be together forever?

How often has a man believed that a woman loved him who was only after his money? Believed it with all his heart until the day he lost his job and his money and found himself abandoned? So, if the love of someone that you can see, touch, and hear, who clearly demonstrates their love to you again and again is not certain and can be merely an illusion, how much less certain should be the love of a being that you can not see, hear, touch, or smell, who has never caressed you, held you in his arms, nursed you when you were sick or wounded, fed you when you were hungry, protected you, kissed the tears from your eyes, whose voice you have never heard actually say the words "I love you", whose eyes you have never seen fill with love as those words passed from their lips?

How often has a woman been harassed by a man who swore that she loved him and just didn't know it because he could feel her love? How often has a man been plagued by some woman he considered little more than a booty-call who swore that he really loved her because she could feel it when they made love, she could feel it when he looked in her eyes, when they kissed? I've been there many times myself. It ain't pretty. The fanatacism of women like that is the same as religious fanatacism. Isn't that the very definition of a stalker? Someone who feels with absolute certainty a love that does not exist?

I won't rehash my entire argument against miracles except to say that for every time you believe that you could not have survived but for the presence of Jesus in your life, you should look around you at all those non-believers like myself who have survived the same and worse. You should think about all those non-believers who have survived brushes with death or rescued themselves or been rescued from hardships without appeal to any higher power. Then think of all those who were not rescued, both faithful and faithless alike. Think about the thousands of believers who died in 911, Katrina, the Tsunami, the young children all around the world who are dying as we speak with prayers on their tongues. Think of all those times you were not rescued, when you have fallen victim to tragedy, hardship, injury, and despair. Where was God's love then?

So what can we say about this loving feeling? What can we say about that feeling deep in your heart and soul that God loves and cares for you? I would say that, that feeling means absolutely nothing. It is evidence of nothing in reality and says nothing about the world around you but only speaks to your own fears and desires. Just as we demonstrated with the feeling of human love, our emotions are easily fooled. Fear and desire, religion's most powerful tools, are also the tools of pimps, players, gold-diggers, conmen, magicians, marketing advertisement execs, and all manner of tricksters. Our senses can be easily deceived by these emotions. We want something so badly that we believe it exists. We begin to feel that it exists. It is no different then the dehydrated traveler seeing an oasis in the desert or a lonely man fantasizing that he is a relationship with a pop-star or a child believing that the father who abandoned him will be coming home any day now because he can feel it in the core of his being or the feelings we used to get at Christmas when we were young and believed that Santa was coming, that feeling that our parents told us was the spirit of Christmas but was little more than the desire for toys. But for the individuals experiencing them these emotional experiences seem unquestioningly real. Still, an objective evaluation of the situation would clearly reveal them to be delusional. That is why reason, evidence, and logical arguments, must guide our beliefs and ideas rather than irrational unverifiable feelings and emotions which are the most unreliable and easily confused and misled so-called sources of knowledge. Think about those thousands of talentless hacks who show up for the American Idol auditions season after season convinced that they are going to be the next pop icon because they can feel it in their souls and then tell me what credibility any sane person could possibly give to emotions.

Recovering from Religion

This past weekend I attended a discussion on the ways that religion insinuates itself into our minds and procreates itself by infecting others. The seminar was conducted by Darrel W. Ray, author of the The God Virus. Darrel Ray runs a website called RecoveringReligionist.com that helps people to deprogram from religious brainwashing. The following is from their "Purpose and Principles".

Preamble


Having awakened our ability to think clearly and logically, we wish to apply the principles of rational thinking and the scientific method to our lives. Religion was often given to us as children, by well meaning parents, before we had the conscious tools to question or resist. We may also have been religiously infected during times of stress when seeking social support. Our purpose is to provide support to each other as we uncover myths and superstitions that have governed so much of our past thinking and behavior. Our purpose is NOT to convert anyone to any organization or group, but to question superstition and irrational ideas when we encounter them. To that end, we propose these ten guiding principles for RR.

1. We recognize that we have the power to identify and eliminate irrational ideas and that our lives are manageable without religion and superstition.

2.We experience the power of rational thinking and recognize that the scientific method can help us reduce and eliminate supernatural ideas and religious infection. We are our own “myth busters.”

3. We are ready and willing to pursue lives based on reason, truth, self examination and integrity.

4. We have made an analytic inventory of our ideas and beliefs and dispensed with those that were based upon superstition and myth.

5. We have admitted to ourselves and to each other that we have been prisoners of myth, superstition, and prejudice born out of religion.

6. We have made a list of all persons we hurt (through judgement or condemnation) because we disapproved of their religious beliefs or their lack of beliefs. We have made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

7. We will work tirelessly to keep religious prejudice from infecting our judgments of people and the world.

8. We will examine the sources of our feelings of guilt and determine if they come from inappropriate religious training. If so, we will strive to eliminate them.

9.We will seek through rational discussion and debate to improve our relationships with all people, believers, non-believers, and unbelievers.

10. We will live by an ethic that values humanity and human relationships above dogma and superstition.


The same religious "virus" that Mr. Ray identifies has infected our people and continues to replicate itself in generation after generate with all the virulence of Diabetes, AIDS, or Heart Disease. This religious mania is as much an addiction as crack, heroine, or alcohol and affects our community in much the same way as these mind-numbing agents. With so many of our people still infected with this curse we need a recovery program. We need an exit strategy. In the next few months I will be working on just that. Stay tuned.

Not Every Head Shall Bow

Were I the smartest man in the world, the sexiest man, the best athlete, the most creative and most successful, and yet I demanded that all of my friends and loved ones continually tell me how smart, sexy, athletic, and talented I was, observers would immediately spot the flaw in my character. My weakness would be glaringly apparent. Such Narcissism would immediately indicate issues of insecurity and low self-esteem. Most people would consider such behaviors pathetic and find me intolerable to be around. The demand for constant praise and reassurance is a sign of doubt and weakness and we recognize it as such except when it comes to our imaginary deities. Such a flaw is pitiful and obnoxious enough in a man but in a god?

The idea that an omnipotent creator would require its inferior creations to constantly praise and fawn over him, write hymns and prayers celebrating his virtues, build shrines and temples and perform complex rituals in celebration of his omnipotence is a silly one. It is ridiculous. It is near definitive proof that religion is man made, a reflection of man's own insecurities. Why would a being that dwarfs the universe care if you prostrated yourself before him every night? Why would an all-powerful being care if you repeated prerehearsed compliments in concert with a few dozen acquaintances at the same time every week? Why would he require that you continually reaffirm how great he is and how flawed and unworthy you are and reward those who were the most flattering and self-effacing, those who debased and degraded themselves the most, those who showed the lowest self-esteem? Why would such a being need his ego stroked? And what self-respecting person would give in to such egotistical demands? What type of submissive slave would so willingly prostrate themselves before such an egomaniac? What degree of cowardice and self-loathing must this take?

The idea of worship and God's seemingly fetishistic need for it should discount any notion of God's perfection. This is a great and obvious character flaw. It is God wearing his insecurities on his sleeve.

The demand for subservience and submission that seems to be a prerequisite of all religions is more indicative of a totalitarian regime than of an ideology of love and peace. These are the egoistic mandates of a dictator, a fascist, not of a loving father. These are the demands of the master to his slave or pet. The idea that any Black person in America would so willing submit to this type of slavery, so willingly bow to even a benevolent master, is surprising and, quite frankly, embarrasing. It makes my stomach turn to see my people on their knees begging and groveling before their imaginary overseer. It is the very definition of the happy slave. It is Uncle Tom smiling and tap-dancing to please his massa.

A loved one dies and the faithful praise God for his mercy. They lose their jobs, their homes, their savings, catch debilitating diseases, suffer any number of tragedies both minor and major and still this imaginary deity demands that they flatter and thank him for not making them suffer even greater tragedies and the faithful eagerly comply, cowering and quivering in fear, drooling in adoration of their abusive parent-figure like whipped dogs that kiss the hand that smacks them. This is the very definition of tyranny, yet rather than resistance which would be considered the honorable response to any earthly despot, it is expected that you would respond to this fanciful creation with praise? It is considered a virtue to bow to this tyrant and evil to question even the most amoral and absurd of the biblical laws. Again, what coward would consider such a response virtuous? Who but the biggest pussy on earth would, after even a momentary examination of what this great overseer above demands of his slaves would respond with anything but scorn and rebellion?

"Tell me again how wonderful I am. Tell me I'm great. Tell me about how pathetic, wretched and worthless you are and how magnanimous I am to even tolerate your existence."

Great guy this God. Well, here's my answer to this imaginary tyrant, this man-made overseer. FUCK YOU! I don't bow to anyone. Stroke your own damn ego. Even if God were more than simply the manifestation of man's fears and desires, even were he a living being and every word of the bible true, the act of worship would still be unjustified, unwarranted, and pathetic. It would still be pitiful,cowardly and disgusting and any deity that would demand this of their creations would be anything but benevolent. The act of worship would still be beneath me and should be beneath all of us, especially my Black brothers and sisters who struggled for so many centuries to free themselves of their masters but now so wretchedly grovel at the feet of a master who is little more than a myth, a lie, a sham. We ought to be ashamed. We ought to be embarrased. I hope to see the day when every knee finally unbends, when every head is finally held high and every man and woman learns to stand on their own without need of illusions. When mankind emerges from its emotional and intellectual infancy and finally shrugs off its dependence on imaginary gods and accepts that humanity alone is responsible for its own destiny. When we can accept that there are no all-powerful puppet masters pulling our strings and understand and acknowledge the cause and affect relationships between our own choices and decisions and their consequences and not look to imaginary beings to rescue us when we fuck up. When we can accept that God is a creation of man and not the other way around and finally sacrifice this myth to the good of humanity after millenia of humanity sacrificing itself to imaginary god's. Wake up. Wake the fuck up!

Faithless

It has been said recently by believers and even, surprisingly, a few agnostics, that everyone has faith. A recent acquaintance made this remark "... I, personally, don't believe there is such a thing as atheism--but more agnostic[s]. Atheism means without faith, correct? But everyone has faith and belief! Whether it's in God, or [themselves], or faith and belief that if they drop something-it will fall... " This seems to be an increasingly popular opinion. My good friend and ideological antithesis, Maurice Broaddus has expressed a similar opinion saying "We are both men of faith in our ways" and my friend and mentor in the writing business, Brian Keene, during a panel on "religious and secular influences in horror" made an almost identical statement about me having faith which allows me to enter the ring and fight.

This word "faith" has been expanded to encompass more than the word was ever intended to in an effort to justify itself. Faith is belief without evidence. Merriam-Webster describes it as:

1 a: allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1): fidelity to one's promises (2): sincerity of intentions 2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust 3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction ; especially : a system of religious beliefs

None of these definitions describe what allows me to enter the ring confident of a win or what allows me to believe that if I drop something that it will fall. A firm belief in something for which there is no proof would not move me to fight another 250lb man using knees, elbows, punches, and kicks. Hard training and a history of knocking opponents on their asses in the gym, the street, and in the ring is the only thing that could make me agree to take such a fight.

There is a difference between faith, inductive reasoning, hope, and calculated risks. Let me start by defining inductive reasoning so that you can see how greatly it differs from the wishful, magical thinking that is faith.

Inductive reasoning is defined as the inference of a generalized conclusion based on a series of particular instances. It is drawing probable conclusions based on statistical evidence. To apply this to my fighting career, when I walk into the ring it is not faith that instills me with the confidence that I will probably win but the fact that I have won numerous times in the past. An 18 and 6 record with 15 knockouts means that there is a high statistical probability that I will knockout my next opponent but this is not a certainty and I know this. I have lost on six occasions. That means that there is a statistical possibility even though less of a probability of me losing again and I know this. I have no delusions. Unlike the faithful, I am aware of the possibility that I could be wrong, that I might lose despite all of my hard training and past accomplishments. The fact that I have trained hard, done my roadwork, my bag work, my pad work, crushed one sparring partner after another makes me confident of my chances but I am still aware of the fact that my opponent has likely trained just as hard and also believes himself to have a good chance of victory based on his own past accomplishments. I hold no delusions of a guaranteed victory unlike the faithful and when I win I do not thank God or Allah or Buddha or Krishna. I thank my trainers and sparring partners and maybe even the fans and judges.

This is also true of the Law of Gravity. My belief in gravity is not faith. That's a rather curious and absurd accusation. The belief that one might break the Laws of Gravity would require faith but believing in something that conforms to all the known facts and everything else in my experience requires no faith. As I said, it would require faith not to believe in it. The fact that everything in my experience, with the exception of things like helium balloons which are lighter than air, has fallen when dropped gives me more than a statistical probability but near certainty that if I drop something which is not lighter than air that it will also fall. It is simple inductive reasoning. Everything that I have dropped has fallen therefore if I drop this object it will also fall. There is no faith involved in this conclusion.

A calculated risk is a chance taken after careful estimation of the probable outcome. Last year, at the age of 37, I entered the ring again after a four-year retirement. The day before my fight I caught a cold. I knew very little about my opponent. Some may say that my choice to fight him anyway despite all the obstacle against me, age, inactivity, a chest cold, was an act of faith, faith in myself. This was not faith but a calculated risk. I was counting on the fact that I would have retained some of my former talent, enough to win. I was thinking of those 17 past victories. I was thinking of those 15 opponents that I had previously rendered unconscious. I was thinking about how I looked in sparring and counting on my skill, my experience, and my physical strength to win the day. I weighed the evidence for and against the chances of me winning and I took the risk. My calculated risk paid off and I won every round against an overmatched opponent. Had it ended differently I would have simply smiled, shook my opponent's hand and said, "Oh well, I tried my best." I would have accepted the loss for what it was not the judgement of the divine or of fate but my own failing.

When I get into my car and take it on the freeway at 70 miles an hour I am taking a calculated risk based on the fairly low statistical probability of me getting into a fatal accident based on the relatively few such accidents when compared with the millions of drivers on the road and the fact that of the thousands of times that I have driven on the freeway I have had no high-speed collisions. I make the same reassuring mental calculations when getting on airplanes and rollercoasters. No faith involved. If it did, in fact, require faith to get onto airplanes, rollercoasters, and America's freeways because there was no evidence at all that such actions were safe then I would simply not do them. That's why I don't shoot heroine or smoke cigarettes. Because all evidence indicates that these practices are unsafe. Doing these things despite this evidence would require either faith or stupidity which by all accounts are nearly synonymous.

In March of last year I decided to take another fight. I knew that I had been much slower in my comeback fight earlier that year but I chalked it up to being 9 or 10 pounds above my ideal weight and being rusty from inactivity. So, I dropped down to 229 pounds and fought in Chuck Norris's World Combat League. I was hoping that I still had it. I had no faith just a burning desire to return to the speed and athleticism of my youth. I was, of course, aware of the possibility that it had not been my weight or the inactivity that had slowed my reflexes in my previous fight but rather my age. Still I had hope and courage. I wanted to believe that I still had it but I was only slightly surprised when I missed a left hook in the opening seconds of the first round and ate a perfectly timed right hand that dropped me onto my back. These things happen. Anyone who enters the ring knows that there is the possibility of serious injury, contusions, lacerations, broken bones, concussions, and even death. It is the price we pay to do what we love, for that chance of victory, fame, and glory. We all know that we, even the best of us, can be knocked out at anytime.

Some people play the lottery because they hope that they will win even knowing the staggering odds against it. Others play it convinced that they will win, seemingly unmindful of the odds against them. These are usually the ones who tell you that they read it in their horoscope or tarot cards or had a dream or that God told them they would win. The former are merely hopeful while the ladder are faithful. Faith is belief without evidence and against all contradictory evidence. Common sense made my old ass retire again after my loss, saving me much future embarrassment and perhaps irreparable physical damage. Faith keeps an old and vastly diminished Evander Hollyfield still climbing in the ring for fights convinced that God has proclaimed that he will be the undisputed world heavyweight champion again. Faith will undoubtedly turn his story into a tragedy.

The faithful do not accept the possibility that their God may at any time be proven false. They do not accept the possibility that their bible may at any moment be proven to be a piecemeal collection of conflicting and often contradictory myths and fairytales from the illiterate, ignorant, and superstitious. They do not accept the possibility that their prayers may be vain words spoken to empty air, little more than, as Bill Maher once said "wishing it were so". They do not accept the possibility that they have been brainwashed and deluded since birth by their parents, families, culture and society to believe in the nonsensical. Their beliefs are not based on statistical probabilities. They are not based on facts. They are not calculated risks. They are not merely hopes. These are the blind unsubstantiated convictions of the willfully ignorant. Faith, like romantic love, is blind. It is irrational. It requires no evidence and none can refute it. And just like love, faith is most often misguided and wrong. The faithful, like the infatuated, are often so overcome with emotion that they cannot see the obvious. They are heedless of the evidence against their belief and are defensive and hostile toward any attempt to point out the errors in their convictions. The very fact that any hypothesis requires faith as a neccessary condition of its belief should be proof enough of its falsehood.

So, do we all act on faith? Not I. Does everyone have faith? Again, I at the very least, do not and it would appear that many many others also do not have faith whether it is in imaginary megalomaniacal sky fathers or witches or unicorns or winning lottery numbers or the perfect man or woman. Some of us rely on evidence to form our opinions and in the absence of evidence we hope and take calculated risks and often fail but accept and learn from those failures and alter our opinions accordingly.

Coming Out

Letting go of the myth of God is difficult in itself. Many of us grew up in the church. We grew up praying to God daily, confessing our sins, asking for guidance, and praying for strength. We kept a running monologue going on in our heads only we thought of it as more of a conversation, a conversation with a very quite and attentive listener who just let us ramble on without interrupting. Like a therapist who just sat back, encouraging us to talk and work out our problems for ourselves. But we always believed that there was someone listening. Realizing that there was no one on the other end of the prayer phone was hard enough for most of us, accepting that there was no grand puppetmaster controlling our lives, that the universe had no great plan for us, was painful for many of us. Accepting that we had to create our own meaning for our lives, that our successes and failures were our own, the product of our own decisions was terrifying but not nearly as terrifying as telling our family about our new epiphanies.

I didn't so much come out of the closet as I came out of the cage, roaring like a lion, determined to spill the blood of religion and rend the flesh from the bones of faith. I was a self-proclaimed militant atheist.

I had lost my faith two years before I had the proper words to express it. It was 1988, the year I graduated from high school that I became an atheist but I had no idea what that meant. I felt lost and forlorn and was desperately searching for some faith to replace my lost belief in the Christian God. I started hanging out with punk rockers on the streets of Philadelphia. They were all atheists as well so I assumed that they must have had some insight into what one did when they stopped believing in God. I was wrong of course. It wasn't until I left for college and met philosophy students who had been studying these questions that I began to get some understanding of what it meant to give up my faith, the world of wonder that opened up when you stopped believing and began to question.

Two philosophy students at Antioch College, Gustave Shultz and Chris Dimatto, were the first to introduce me to critical thinking and philosophical speculation. The next year I switched from a Creative Writing major to a Philosophy major and began to read the writings of Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Kierkegaard, Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Rene' Descartes. I read everything I could get my hands on from Socrates and Plato to Herman Hesse and Buddha. It was then that I began to realize that I was not alone in my confusion. It was apparent that after more than two thousand years of inquiry no one had yet come up with the answers. The meaning of life remained a mystery and all the religions, philosophies, and ideologies that professed to the possession of some knowledge in regards to the meaning of life were all full of shit.

I was outraged by this realization. I was angry. How could they not know? How could no one in the history of man have answered these questions? All those libraries, all those books, all those professors with their PHDs and, worst of all, all of those priests, pastors, preachers, and spiritual leaders, none of them knew any more than I did. They were all clueless. How could this be? I looked at all those religious zealots with their faith and certainty and I wanted to wake them all up. I wanted to tell them all what I now knew. Because to me, they were all the problem. The reason no one had found the answers was because there were so few of us looking. Most people were content to remain ignorant. They were content to believe what was written in their so-called holy books even if it made no sense and conflicted with all the known facts of the universe. They had to be woken up and so I made it my mission. I called my mother almost every night and we argued about religion. I argued with everyone I could find. I was angry at the world's stupidity and I wanted to drag them all out into the sunshine of reason even if the sunlight burned their fragile skin and caused them to spontaneously combust like vampires.

It wasn't until I went home for Christmas that year, full of fight, that I realized what my new awareness had gained me. I could no longer relate to my own family. They were all tucked comfortably inside their illusions. I looked at my grandmother and all the comfort she took in her faith and I did not have the heart to tell her. I even eased up off my mother. A few years later, my mother called my sister and I and announced that she wanted to become a minister. To this day I often wonder if it was debating with me about religion that drove my mother back to the church. She had always believed but had never been very serious about Christianity. I wonder if my attempts to take God away from her entirely is what sent her screaming into the arms of her imaginary father. I hardly know her now. She knows exactly how I feel about her religion and her faith. We just don't discuss it anymore. I don't discuss it with any of my relatives. I leave them to their illusions. They don't preach to me and I don't preach to them.

So what's your story? How did you come out to your family about your lack of belief? What was the result? Share your tales with us and perhaps it will help others who are still lurking in the shadows to find their voices and declare their unbelief. Let's hear from you.