An Atheist Named Kate

I once heard someone say that a lot of people who do well in school do not do well when it comes to thinking objectively. “Smart” people in school can use their brain to amass knowledge, but fail to use their brain to contemplate ordinary stuff in the real world. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.

Academically I did pretty well. I had about a 3.8 GPA in high school. College was a little tougher but I still didn’t do too badly. Despite doing well in school, I’d like to believe that I am a pretty good objective, rational thinker. I know that I can generally figure things out for myself without being told; whatever that might indicate.

About five years ago this rational thinking of mine turned me into an atheist. It began when I pondered little religious tidbits that just did not exactly add up, stuff like God requiring “faith” in order to believe. “Faith” is not a virtue. It’s just a benign state-of-mind. So why would God set things up to require faith? I had no answer.

This type of brain work did not stop there. It got bigger and wider. I wondered why God had not visited earth in about 2,000 years; at least he had not visited earth in any kind of big, magnificent way. What was holding him back? It certainly couldn’t be shyness, could it?

I had occasionally looked through the Bible, but I had never sat down and read it with a critical eye. When I finally did, I can safely say that I was not all that impressed. I was not impressed by it in the literary sense, or in the moral sense. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has the Bible beat hands down in both categories, as does A Tale of Two Cities. O. Henry’s short stories The Gift of the Magi and The Last Leaf are all about self-sacrifice and love of thy fellow man, both eloquently written. The Bible supports slavery in a painfully lumbering literary style.

I have divided up my atheism into two categories. The first category addresses whether or not some powerful entity created the universe. Personally, I think it is possible; unlikely, but possible. I think there is about a 5% chance that some all-powerful entity creating the universe’s matter, concocting the Laws of Physics, and put it all in motion.

The second category has to do with whether this entity is a “god” who knows about us here on earth, hears our prayers, judges us by our deeds, etc. To my way of thinking, this “god” is pure fiction. The popular gods of mainstream religions most probably are products of some imaginations, imaginations of puzzled and even frightened people several thousand years ago who could not understand the world around them and were looking for explanations.

For a while my mother had a tough time with my atheism. My father, on the other hand, is completely apathetic when it comes to religion. He could not have cared less about my religious beliefs. Thank God for that… c’mon, you know what I mean.