There, I’ve come out and said it.
I’m an Atheist.
I have some friends who proudly announced it when they found Christ. I suppose that when your heart is full of joy, you just have to tell the whole world. I suppose that is why I am placing this on my blog. An old friend told me that coming to Japan would change my life. I didn’t know how right she would be. Japan itself doesn’t have a lot to do with this decision, but it was the place I was in when I made it. So I’d to announce it once again for the entire world to read.
I’m an Atheist.
I have decided to completely turn my back on organized religion. In addition to this, I will also being making brochures that proclaim critical thinking and open-mindedness as the only salvation for humanity. Whenever I see Mormons or other preachers on the street, I will hand out my brochures after them and encourage people to consider reason over madness. I am not the first to do this, but I think it’s essential to progress. So what is my new philosophy?
-I find the existence of a God to be highly unlikely or impossible (as god is currently defined)
-I live for the here and now, knowing that an afterlife is not waiting for me.
-I live as a secular humanist to help the plight of the poor and the persecuted all over the world.
-I will encourage critical thinking and skepticism. I seek the truth, regardless of how harsh that truth may be. I seek comfort what is.
-I will explore the natural world. It is my home. It is all I know.
-I will look at everything with an open mind.
For the first time in my life I feel truly liberated. I’ve known about this for a long time now, but I wanted to make it official.
If you feel the same as I do, I encourage you to comment and talk about it as well. Here are some places you may with to check out:
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
I feel it is important to get involved now. The forces of intolerance are closing in and we need to prepare. We need to do everything we can to spread the word of free thought and reason.
I can’t remember when I first became an atheist, but I did begin to tell others about it at age 7. Up until my early 20’s, I even tried to encourage others in my beliefs. Since then however, I don’t make any special effort to tell others about being atheist, but I freely tell people when asked. I do however promote my philosophy of being open minded. From my experience, telling people I’m atheist causes them to stop listening, whereas open mindedness seems to be easier to promote.
Some of my family and friends do take comfort in the afterlife aspects of religion during loss, but for the most part don’t associate themselves in any other way with religion. They also tend to be extremely open minded. As long as I don’t see their beliefs leading them down the wrong road, causing them to be close minded or consuming too much of their lives, I don’t make any attempts to change them. For the most part, they just don’t put any thought into the existence of mankind and live their lives. Life is too short to worry about what comes after.
For whatever reason, I seem to have been born with the need to think about everything. Maybe this is the reason behind my beliefs. The family (parents and half siblings) I grew up with are not religious in the least, but they don’t seem to have the need to think about everything as myself. However, from what I know of my half brother Jason (I think you know him) whom I did not grow up with, he seems to have this. I wonder if this is genetic or something.
I do agree with your philosophy and I do my best to encourage an open mind. As much as I would like to put more effort to promoting this message, my time if focused on mostly selfish motives (family, friends, surviving in this world). But maybe by helping those closest to me, they can go on to help those closest to them and so on. One day when I have more time, I will probably start promoting this message more generally though.
Jason is God-less!
I was God-less for not updating my RSS feed when he updated the blog and thus missing out on his goodness.