OCD

I have decided that I must suffer from some odd form of OCD. I get hooked on something interesting and cannot let it go until I've "scratched the itch." For a long time, I was hooked on crossword puzzles. I was doing several each day. That went on for months. Now I'm hooked on "paper dolls" (drawing clothing styles using a template of my own self). Intellectually, I'm still hooked on nontheism, but I suspect that this "addiction" (since it is as long-standing as most of my life itself) will never go away.

There's a poll going around on Facebook (yet another of FB's "useful" features) asking whether there is a god. Of course, the majority of people clicking on it are checking "yes" (especially since a person's thumbnail photo appears with the vote). I'd be willing to bet that most of us nontheists are avoiding that poll (I clicked "no") simply to avoid the persecution of theistic friends and relatives.

There is no god. There never has been. The earth was formed rather late in the process we've come to call the Big Bang, and life on this planet formed through a series of evolutionary steps that took eons. This planet was not created by any god. As humans evolved, they began to concoct explanations for what they could not understand. At first, each phenomenon had its own deity (or deities). Gradually some cultures moved toward one god rather than multiple ones, and they picked their strongest, meannest god, usually their war god. (That's why the Old Testament is so full of a wrathful, vengeful, jealous god.) Since most people didn't like going around feeling scared all the time, that god began to morph into a more loving, kind god. Christians took it a step further (though they actually borrowed the myths of the God Son, the Virgin Birth, etc., from previous mythology) and created the Jesus God, who is supposed to be so wonderful that he actually allowed his own daddy-god to kill his earthly body in a public shaming and humiliating torture scene. We readers of this so-called holy book (more on that in a second) are supposed to feel so grateful that Jesus-God died for us that we'll fall down on our knees and worship him.

The bible is a collection of stories that began as mythologies passed on orally and were gradually written down. We have NO firsthand accounts of any phenomenon. Everything was written down decades and often centuries after it supposedly occurred. Of course it is full of crapola. The Jews were never enslaved in Egypt. They were enslaved in Babylon, but not Egypt. Moses did not write the first five books of the old testament. The Four Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) were not written by the apostles of Jesus. They were written by unnamed people decades after the supposed life and death of the man known as Jesus. None of Jesus's apostles were likely literate. Nor was Jesus himself able to do more than perhaps to read.

The words in red in the new testament are not the words of Jesus. They are the words that people who never knew the man have attributed to him.

There are no miracles, at least not the loaves-and-fishes, water-into-wine type. Even Jefferson rewrote the bible to omit that stuff. Those are myths invented to make the Jesus-God more worthy of reverence and awe.

Even the book of Revelation is only one of the books of revelation that was written. It happens to be the one selected to appear in the canonical version. Others were excluded, just as other gospels were excluded, simply because a group of human men decided what the creed would be, how the dogma would read.

Wars are fought for religion. People die for religion. There is no omniscient, omnipotent being, because if there were, we'd have to fire him for doing one helluva lousy job.

Logic demands that we abandon these superstitious beliefs if we ever hope to make the world a better place. Religion is a BAD thing, not a good one. It helps no one except to help people live in their little worlds colored with rose-colored glasses. I've watched my family live in abject misery and poverty, all because it's what their god wants them to do, presumably. I've listened to people tell me that education and knowledge and curiosity are bad because they erode "faith." I've got plenty of faith. I have faith unbounded in the ability of human intellect, will power, work ethic, and curiosity to solve the world's problems. Religion does not solve the problems. It creates the problems that then need to be solved via reason.