I never considered myself a religion, but I also never considered myself an Atheist until just recently, basically because I thought being an Atheist meant you didn’t believe in a God. I always knew I didn’t believe in God, but I was not bold enough to say there is nothing like even a magnetic outside force or spirit - simply because I don’t know. That was the thing that always made me shun religion; I didn’t know, but what I did know, was that they didn’t know either. Being an Atheist, to me, just means that I recognize everything you tell me to believe in has no validity. Until you can prove to me something’s true, I won’t believe it. And if I can effectively find evidence to contradict your every claim, I’m not convinced.
As a child, I was baptised as a Protestant –Christian and I went to church on Sundays regularly for about five years. God and Jesus were basically never brought up in the house, so I only heard of them through church. This could be why I thought it was totally ridiculous, but now I think I was just a smart kid. I would always find it funny when adults spoke of Jesus like fact, such as “Jesus loves you”, and as a little kid I thought, why are these adults talking about a story character like he’s real? I found it to be almost lunacy, but I knew if I sang “This Land Is My Land” I’d get cupcakes at the end. So, I went along with it, just trying not to laugh at the stupidity of it all. I know now that my mom also doesn’t believe in the Bible, so we weren’t in church long. We stopped going before I started grade school, and religion never came up, really, until I talked my mom into letting me go to a Catholic high school, just so I could be with friends. What an eye-opener. I’ve heard of crazy-devotes, and I’d see the apparent “healers” on T.V., but I never knew how subtly but strongly this religion dictated everyone’s lives. I thought I was in the Twilight Zone when I heard them say during the morning announcements, “Remember, it’s a sin to have sex before marriage. You will go to hell.” And I thought it was a ridiculous waste of time when we had to spend our Religion classes filling out sheets with questions like, “I know Jesus loves me because…?” I mean, I was sixteen! To me, this wasn’t education at all; it was a joke. We had school masses that I efficiently skipped, so religion just stayed a vague joke to me, until I had to study the bible. That was when I got a real shock. The first thing I remember thinking was: people actually believe this? Maybe it was because I was forced into it, but I became a smart-mouth that bought up gaps in everything. And, it’s hard to respect your teacher when you know that on the subject she’s teaching, you are vastly more informed. So, I began to challenge everything. I don’t know the entire Bible word for word, scripture by scripture, but I know enough to know I will NEVER follow any religion, just because I have more common sense than that. I’m a happy, good person. I don’t hurt people or steal things, and guess what? I’ve learned nothing through the Bible and God other than being able to separate fact from fiction, and I can say confidently that the Bible is most definitely fiction. All you have to do is read it, which I’m surprised to say, not a lot of Christians or Catholics do, and just knowing certain phrases by heart doesn’t count. If you were even minimally educated, you would recognize that. I don’t disagree with going to church and having a sense of community, or even praying if you really believe in it, but to read the Bible and from that say its contents are true, you have to be one hell of an idiot.
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