Atheism is not Satinism

My parents came from somewhat religious families. They went to church on Sunday and both went to catholic schools. They were raised to read the bible and know the ways of the church.

My childhood was different. There were brief periods when my parents felt church was the answer. We would attend for a few weeks and then leave our pews to go cold for a bit. My parents always raised my brother, sister and myself to simply be good people. They didn’t need to instill the fear of God into us to make their point of living life to its fullest and being good to our fellow man. My parents still have faith; it helps them in tough times. For them their faith in God is what steers them, even though they do not attend church regularly now they still believe. Religion is a very personal thing. I’ve never put down those who believe what they do; I hope to not be put down for not believing the things I don’t.

As for me, well being allowed to grow and learn from life the things I could I have developed quite a different mindset in regards to religion and its place in my life. I have always avoided discussing religion with people because my views always seemed to clash with those in the discussion. It will probably shock my parents if they read this, to discover that I find myself to have a more atheists’ view of life. I have never been able to grasp religion the way the religious do. To say I didn’t believe in God and be in my family probably wouldn’t go over well, initially at least. What I get from the bible and its stories were many valuable moral tales. In my life I put into practice many of the things I have learned in the bible, the things that help me be a better person. The commandments for the most part are a very good basic set of moral standards and very reasonable to follow. It’s the sin and sacrifice that I never really got. Perhaps its my love of science, my desire to be a free thinker or my openness of spirit that keeps me from believing that this world we live in was created by one being, and all things in my life are set in motion and dictated by the man upstairs. I once read something that really put into words the way I felt about religion,” If we are to teach creationism in place of evolution in schools, are also to teach the stork theory in place of human development when teaching where babies come from?” I don’t remember who said that but it struck a chord with me. I compiled a list of some other more famed people and their atheist and agnostic views. P.S. I kind of screwed something up when composing this post so after you hit the read more link, scroll down to find the list. Oops.

	"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." American President- Abraham Lincoln
	"All thinking men are atheists." Writer- Earnest Hemmingway
	"I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world." Musician- Dave Matthews
	"I wasn't raised Catholic, but I used to go to Mass with my friends, and I viewed the whole business as a lot of very enthralling hocus-pocus. There's a guy hanging upon the wall in the church, nailed to a cross and dripping blood, and everybody's blaming themselves for that man's torment, but I said to myself, 'Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. There’s no blood of any sacred martyr on my hands. I pass on all of this." "I believe that all important matters have to be settled here, not in the clouds somewhere after we kick off." Musician- Billy Joel
	"Religion is just mind control." Comedian- George Carlin
	"If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine- but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good- and CARES about any of it- to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working. " Musician- Frank Zappa
	"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." Freidrich Nietzsche
	"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." Star Trek creator- Gene Roddenberry
	"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." Napoleon Bonaparte
	Driving through a Swiss city one day, Hitchcock suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." His companion was surprised to see nothing more alarming that a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the child's shoulder. "Run, little boy," cried Hitchcock, leaning out of the car. "Run for your life!" Writer/Director- Alfred Hitchcock
	"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows." Writer- Samuel Clemens
	"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create." Painter- Vincent Van Gogh
	"I turned to speak to God, About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there." "Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me." Writer- Robert Frost
	"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." "The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life." Sigmund Freud
	"I was very disturbed when Jesus found a demon in a guy, and he put the demon in a herd of pigs, then sent them off a cliff. What did the pigs do? I could never figure that out. It just seemed very un-Christian. Technically, I'm an agnostic, but I definitely believe in hell -- especially after watching the fall TV schedule." Simpsons Creator- Matt Groening
	Well I find myself with a strong spiritual need - in the past five years, particularly. And, certainly, it's acknowledged as an important part of recovery from addiction. Yet, it's hard for me to find an actual handle for it. I'm not saying that it's not helpful to think of having a real handle on the universe, your own personal point of attachment. But...I think it's crazy. But it's an insanity that keeps us sane. You might call a lot of these songs "spirituals for agnostics." Musician- James Taylor
	"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." Microsoft founder- Bill Gates
	Religion is important and patriotism is important, but religion and patriotism without a sense of humor, and you're in trouble. You know that's, that's why our enemy is so frightening, they have no humor. This is a group of people who wander the desert for thousands and thousands of years, and never ran into a knock-knock joke. You see, if these people had any humor at all, none of this would have happened because no one could have stood in front of them and said that if they killed themselves in the name of Allah, that they would immediately go to heaven and be met by 72 virgins. No one could have said that because everybody would have known that that's a punchline to a joke. Comedian- Lewis Black