Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation an analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

-Buddha

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Ok, After taking in all of the ideas of religion I could find and have learned, and of course the obviously predominant one in america, (christianity) I came to one glaring answer: its just too illogical. I couldn't grasp or believe the idea that there could be a god more powerful than us as humans, that would put us on his created earth, without personally revealing himself to his creation and then expect us to take the WORD of previous generations and our own as any basis. The idea that there is something out there that would rather see some of its own creations be damned to eternal torture for not believing in a god unseen when this supposed god could easily make itself personally known to the world is cruel and ridiculous.
Now about christianity personally... It is entirely based on a book that was written approximately 1950+ years ago. (The large majority of the bible is believed to have been written and collected approximately 50 years after christ's death, I have to say, that is one good memory to remember a whole books worth of quotes word for word...) Ok, the basic logic for god goes something like this. They believe that god is real because it says so in the bible, and the bible is true and correct because it is written by a god described in that bible. They are trying to claim truth using each other as evidence.
In the bible, it is said that god is infallible, or never wrong. To be never wrong, you have to be all-knowing, and it is also said that the bible is the word of god. So why are there mistakes? Why so many contradictions? Why so many truly inconceivable stories? Why are there things left out that are clearly in Earth’s history? Do you honestly believe that god would allow his creations change his word or let it get lost in interpretation? Why isn't their magic book of god that is so unexplainably perfect there is no question of god? Doesn't that go against the all-powerful all-knowing aspect? Instead people are forced and/or convinced that these stories demand a level of interpretation. (Note however, that when it was written, no interpretation was necessary because people didn't know how impossible these stories were...)

How come dinosaurs aren’t clearly noted in the bible? Surely god knew about them, and being all-knowing, he surely knew that some day humans would find the fossils and question it. Don’t try to use the “Satan put them there to try to sway us” excuse. Why would god let satan do that? Don’t you think that god should have more power than satan and would be able to counter-act such a plan? And genesis, what the heck is that? To say god “formed man of the dust of the ground,” is laughable at best. First, why would he need to use anything? Why all of a sudden did god need to use a base for a creation? Then to go on and say that Eve was made from Adam’s “dusty” rib, she must have been boney, about 7" tall, and all bent over. The reasoning that some Christians use to explain this is that its a metaphor for science because of the elements in our bodies and in the "dust" are the same. A nice thought, except for the fact that our bodies are at least 70% water...(hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus) Just like with the bible, science isn't something you can pick and choose facts from, and then ignore things science has proven. *Cough*(Evolution) Of course, to say that you accept evolution would be against the bible. (For it says in the bible, god created man, then beast..." etc, not god created a pool of water that grew into man and beast through many years) There is also no way to say that humans didn’t evolve and the other animals did, for those that try to say that... for two reasons: One, evolution only makes a species better adapted to their environment, and humans would adapt because there is no way we are perfect, and Two, it clearly says in genesis that god “formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air…” Where does that leave an opening for evolution? Another thing, the bible says god created man directly (Created man in god's image), and with no evolution, how can there be so many deviations and varieties in the human race? What is god, a patchwork quilt? Besides the evolution reason, Why, if god is trying to save us, and not trying to make it harder to believe him, then why does he fill the book that is the only basis for belief in him with riddles and metaphors? Why should we need to interpret gods word, why didn't he just write the complete undeniable truth? (...because man was the original sole author, not god. If god told man to write it, he would have told him right.) Besides that, the book has gone through so many changes and languages that it is definitely different than it was. (Though does that stop the religious from calling it the direct word of god? Not hardly.) Why would god spend so much time getting it right the first time when he knew (being infalliable) that it would get twisted up in the future? Wouldn't he fix it with his limitless power?

Now back to the section that denotes man was “created in our image…” I’ll just pretend that it doesn’t say “our” right there, because that just throws things all out of wack…. Ok, so we are in his image, and god is supposedly perfect, so why aren’t we? I’m not talking about what we chose to do that is wrong, I am talking about physically, why aren’t we? Take for example, hiccups. It would be really handy if they actually worked when you were choking, but do they? No. And every time I spill something, drop something, stumble, fall, forget, miscalculate, make a wrong decision, get a back ache, get sick, every time my brain, nervous system, or body malfunctions, it is proof that I, as a human, am a bad design. Back problems, tooth decay, allergies, asthma, arthritis, epileptic fits, migraines, diabetes, cancer... all of these natural diseases, being natural, must be created by god. Why?

Which leads me to another point, if you happen to believe that life is so complex that it had to be created from a higher power, then where did god himself originate? It says in the bible that there is no other than god himself. So how can he exist? Where did he come from? (Being at least as complex as we are, as we are created in his image.) How could he have just 'always been' ?

Ok, now here's a mistake in the bible, these get me every time, I can’t get how there are such obvious mistakes in god’s infallible book. It first says that God created animals and then man (1:25-26), then right on the opposite page says God first created man then the animals (2:18-19). Now there are plenty of these throughout the book, but Im not going to make the 4 page list of them all here.


This journal is split into two journal entries in order to maintain organization on my main page.



****Click below for the second half of the journal****


WHY I'm atheist Part II