I do not believe

I am an atheist.

I’d say, if you followed my blog you would know that by now. But just in case let me throw it out there for the world to see. As a side note, I wonder how many people will look at the picture for this post and scream “NAZI!”, thereby cementing their status as ignorant morons.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to be a good little boy. Always went to church, said the prayers in school and at our Christmas services. I even attended sunday school back when I was living in the Middle East. When I moved back to Ireland I went to a Christian school, learned about religion there, had my communion and confirmation. I said confession every week in church.

It wasn’t until first year of secondary school when I was about 13 that it finally clicked. I all of a sudden realised I didn’t believe in God anymore.

My secondary school was incredibly religious. A Catholic school to be exact. It had its own chapel, and we had services at the start of every year, every Christmas and at the end of every year. We had at least one hour of “Religious Education” every week.

I wish I could say my loss of belief came after some drastic event, or after weeks of confusion and self-turmoil. Because that would be so much more theatrical. Truthfully though, it wasn’t any of this. I just sat there listening to the priest give his sermon and I just realised…I didn’t believe in God. I don’t think I ever had really, I don’t remember back that far. I began to genuinely worry. I didn’t have faith, yet here I was in a Catholic school. I had often heard about atheists in America being treated badly and looked down upon, and I feared that I would suffer the same fate.

Fortunately that did not come to pass. In fact, for a religious school (which even flew the Vatican City flag outside its walls beside the Irish) there were an awful lot of atheists around.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t run by priests, the jesuits or nuns. It was just founded on Catholic principles. In fact, most of the teachers didn’t believe one way or the other. There were Buddhist’s, Jewish, Protestant students in our ranks. We were very tolerant. But I’ll get onto my school another day.

I don’t recall why, exactly, I stopped believing. But as time has gone my non-belief in the existence of God has prospered and grown. I always held onto a small piece of faith, and every now and then I’d wake up in the morning and just feel like there was, in fact, a God. But I don’t anymore. I can’t look at the evidence and honestly believe in a benevolent, omnipotent Creator who holds us close to His/Her heart.

I am a man of logic, science and mechancial reasoning. Many, many people have come to me and said “Prove there is no God.” I have no reason to. I do not believe in Him, simple as. I am not saying you shouldn’t, I’m saying I don’t. And besides, if I were to say I had a computer that was a sentient AI and could turn invisible, you would want me to prove it wouldn’t you? And would you take “Prove the computer doesn’t exist” as an answer?

I didn’t think so.

3 Responses to “I do not believe”

1. Chinaren says:

   October 1, 2009 at 5:20 am

   Welcome to the non-fold!

   “Many, many people have come to me and said “Prove there is no God.”

   - My reply is ‘Prove there is one.’

   Reply
2. Diff.thinkr says:

   October 1, 2009 at 12:47 pm

   Guess i’m a bit late with my comment…….. Chinaren stole my thoughts right out of my head!!!!!!
   Diff.thinkr´s last blog ..A glass of cold water!!!!!!!!!!!

   Reply
3. Changing Paces | Revelations: Zero says:

   October 2, 2009 at 11:16 pm

   [...] think this was a good week in terms of work done. I attended over half my lectures and got a decent enough post written up. A massive improvement over the past several weeks. Let’s see if I can double all [...]

   Reply