Attention Atheist, can you please do me a favor and listen to me.......

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. As someone like you, who grew up in the church....

who had brothers and a sister who, like you, had parents that "made us go to Church every Sunday".....

Like you, I firmly believed for decades. I thought prayer actually worked and had evidence I convinced myself of.......


Here's my position:

If your faith makes you a better person, if it makes you more charitable, kinder, more giving and forgiving, if it makes or provides you a broader understanding of your fellow man and the human condition, if it brings you comfort and provides solace, .....


Then I am all for it. Goodonya and your faith and beliefs. My own mother, who passed away just over a year ago, was such a person. Her faith made her a better person.

However....

It is my long considered opinion, that for entirely too many of their adherents, the 3 faiths of the god of Abraham and Isaac do little more than teach their followers new and improved ways to HATE their fellow man.

One of the many things that made me realize I was following a path unworthy of my intellect was that, when boiled all the way down, Christianity is basically the idea that "God loves you, but if you don't love him back, he'll hurt you forever".

I don't need the baggage the religion I grew up in saddled me with to be a decent person. I don't need it to have moments of great introspection and revelation. I don't need it to come to personal epiphanies. All I need is the knowledge that love exists, that I have a rational mind and that mythical gods are just that.

Myths. And mankind has been making myths since they first noticed the stars.