As atheists, we should have a way of acknowledging the passing years without recourse to the christian starting point. Like, for me to write "2001" is absurd. 2000 years - give or take a few - since the alleged birth of a racist Jew whom millions of simpletons regard as a god - it doesn't gel with me.
For practical purposes we can't get away from the (almost) universal time measuring device. But Muslims have a different starting point, corresponding to 603 AD in our time. What's to stop atheists introducing our own alternative year-zero?
How do we decide when to start counting from? Realistically, one date is as good as another. I mean, do we use Thomas Paine's birthday or Robert G. Ingeroll's birthday as mile stones? Both men were heretic heroes but neither man was an atheist. For me personally, one date stands out more than any other. It is the date when I realised that there is probably no god. In christian terms it was 1966. I was twenty-four years old.
At a place called Aberfan in Wales, a mountain of coal slag moved, became a landslide, and buried the local school. One hundred and sixteen children, some as young as seven, died.
As a young Boy Scout I had attended Holy Trinity Church. I remembered the vicar preaching a sermon about god being "omnipotent". That was a new word to me but I learned that it meant "all powerful" - capable of anything. After the Welsh disaster I approached that same vicar and asked him why god had allowed the Aberfan children to die. The vicar said, "It's not for us to question the ways of the Lord, my son," and he continued busying himself arranging silver chalices and things.
I came away thinking, "You don't know, do you! You can't answer my question." So I was left with this puzzle - "If god is all powerful, capable of anything, how come he did nothing while that mountain of coal slag shifted?" He could have diverted it. He could have stopped it altogether. Or if he wasn't quite "omnipotent" he could at least have delayed it a few hours till school was over. But he did nothing. He sat on his bum in heaven listening to the terrified screams of the little children, watching them suffocate and die.
And I thought, "No father, no matter how hateful, could allow that to happen. So perhaps there is no god after all." That concept was infinitely more palatable than the thought that god did exist but that he was a hateful, uncaring monster.
You see, christians, you can't have it both ways. It is either the one thing, or the other. If you insist that god does exist and that he is omnipotent then you have to accept the fact that he is a hateful, uncaring monster. Because would a caring father stand by doing nothing while so much as one of his children suffers? Please do think about it.
To say that I became an atheist on that day would be an exaggeration. Let's say, I became a serious doubter. But that day in 1966 was a turning point in my life. So for me, the year 2001 AD in christian terms, is the year 35 SA (Since Awakening) in my terms.
Later in life I started reading the bible and I discovered that the thing worshipped by the masses as a god is in fact a monstrous abomination fabricated in the minds of savages. I learned that not only did god stand by doing nothing while children suffered, but he revelled in their suffering! He drowned children, he burned children, he ordered his assassins to murder children, he instructed them to capture pre-pubescent females and trade them as slaves. He tortured children with horrible diseases and boasted of it. He starved them to death. He set wild beasts on children to rip them apart, limb from tiny limb. He forced parents to eat their progeny, or to sacrifice them on bloody altars to glorify his wretched name.
I became an atheist. But I soon tired of intellectuals and their interminable waffling about the concepts of atheism. No one can disprove the existance of god, so why debate it laboriously and endlessly? Besides, you don't need Quantum Physics or a degree in Rocket Science to show that god has not only left the building, but that he never showed.
Most religious people would agree with me that you can't see god, you can't hear god, you can't smell god, you can't taste god and you can't touch god. Some people might claim that they've seen a "vision" of god, or received a message from god, so I'll take that into account when arguing my point.
First, consider so-called "miracle cures". If there be a god, he has stood by over the millennia doing nothing while millions, nay, billions of children have died of starvation, of disease and plague - which incidently he created. Quite apart from the children the bible accuses him of personally drowning and incinerating, he has maintained the role of passive observer while children drown at sea, burn to death, die of thirst, starve, freeze, and perish in countless natural disasters. Even as I write, hundreds of children are dying horribly in Africa. And yet "the faithful" are so naive they travel to places like Lourdes in the futile belief that this same worthless god cares so much about them that he will intevene to cure their multiple sclerosis or their cancerous organs. HA! In your dreams, buddy!
What makes you think that god will act to save your failed kidneys while a few miles away, in the Phillipines, a ferry is sinking with 200 Catholic children on board as god looks on and picks his nose? Your precious god, your so-called "merciful father" can't be bothered to save so much as one terrified, drowning baby!
Wake up, fools, give your brain a cold shower.
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? Hello-o-o-o...
Imagine an orphaned child. His mother died giving birth to him and his father was killed in the war. Any war. The child is convinced that his parents love him. Furthermore he is convinced that his parents will protect him. He can't see, hear, smell, taste or touch his parents yet he knows they exist. He talks to them. Sometimes he pleads with them for help. Occasionally he sees a vision of his mother. And sometimes he detects a 'sign', for example, at the bottom of his porridge bowl one morning was a clearly visible 'M' pattern - PROVING that his Mother was there with him.
One day, while cycling to school he is hit by a truck and left paralysed from the neck down. He is confined, for the rest of his life, either to bed or to a specially constructed wheel chair.
My question is directed at christians: Are that boy's parents alive somewhere, loving him, watching over him, caring for him, protecting him? If so, they made a poor job of it. They made what you might call, a "god-like" job of it. Or are the watchful, caring parents a figment of his imagination, born out of a desperate yet understandable need to feel loved and protected?
And can you see any parallels in your own belief system?
To my way of thinking, a god which can't or won't intervene to save children, let-alone adults, a god that can't be seen or heard, nor experienced through any of the senses other than the sense known as imagination or wishful thinking, is no god at all.
It is like a long dead parent. But in this case, a parent who never was.
The CHURCH of REAL!
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