Recently I went through a minor revamp of my face­book pro­file, and in the midst of that minor endeavor, I came across a minor issue: that lit­tle innon­cent box that says “reli­gion.” Cur­rently my answer was “Swedish,” and before that: “agnos­tic.” But the real issue was that I am an athe­ist, and I wasn’t sure how peo­ple I know would respond to that. Quite frankly, I believed that oth­ers would think of me dif­fer­ently. Then I decided that I didn’t care what I would be thought of.

Religion–especially how our coun­try and world treats it–has always be a topic which I’ve devoted some amount of spare brain cycles towards. This post may be a lit­tle dis­or­ga­nized and con­fus­ing, but I hope it inspires some of your own thoughts.

The Begin­ning

I didn’t grow up sur­rounded by scrip­ture, pews, or crosses. And noth­ing seemed amiss. When I was around 10, my father gave me the only bible in the house. It was the one which his mother got him when he was 10. He told me that when he was my age, his mother made him go to bible school for six months–every Sun­day. And when those six months were up, he could decide if he wanted to keep going. My father said that I could choose to read it if I wanted, and that I could make my own decisions.

I looked at the pic­tures. And remem­ber read­ing about Noah. Then I lost inter­est. I haven’t read it since.

Con­cep­tions

I’m the prod­uct of my family–especially that of my mother’s. She came from a bunch of Swedish farm­ers who immi­grated to Wash­ing­ton State in the early part of the 20^th cen­tury. My grand­par­ents, great­grand­fa­ther, par­ents, and my mother’s siblings–all atheists.

Yet I always con­sid­ered myself agnos­tic. For what­ever rea­son, I decided that while I couldn’t prove a god existed, I couldn’t dis­prove it either, and fig­ured that in time I could decide things for myself.

What made me decide that I didn’t need a god were a few con­clu­sions that I came to:

1. I lead a happy life, and while I’ve went through some try­ing times, I have never felt a gap­ing hole that needed to be filled by a higher power. I’ve never wished for some higher guid­ance or plan to ratio­nal­ize what was hap­pen­ing around me.

2. I con­sider myself a moral per­son, who is dri­ven to help those around me and try to make the world a bet­ter place. I learned this through my fam­ily and youth–and didn’t need reli­gious texts to instill these val­ues in me.

3. Even if I did decide I needed reli­gion… how was I to know which one was the “cor­rect?” Because odds are, we prob­a­bly aren’t pick­ing the one needed for eter­nal afterlife.

4. And this is more philo­soph­i­cal than any­thing else: but if there is a god, who cre­ated it?

I’ve always con­sid­ered label­ing one­self “agnos­tic” is tak­ing the easy way out–hiding from dif­fi­cult ques­tions and just con­sid­er­ing it a tossup. I’ve decided that the chance of a god exist­ing is basi­cally nil, so I’m not hid­ing anymore.

Run­ning for Office

The most une­lec­table attribute in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics is not being black, a woman, a social­ist, or a com­mu­nist. No, the most une­lec­table attribute is being an atheist.

How is that in a nation that pro­motes reli­gious free­dom really just pro­motes “the free­dom to choose what brand of Chris­tian­ity you sub­scribe to” and frowns upon any­one who derives their moral val­ues from some­thing other than the bible?

If I ever run for some­thing more impor­tant than PUD com­mis­sioner, this post will prob­a­bly sur­face to be used against me. But I’m ready for that. Because I have faith that our nation will judge a per­son on what they believe in, and not how they came to believe in those values.

Final Thoughts

And when I hear the phrase “God bless you” I always trans­late it into “Fate be kind to you.” It seems to work just as well.