NorCal Atheist: July 2015

Welcome to NorCal Atheist

Growing up as a child, I was raised to be a devout Baptist in an area of the country that was completely saturated by religion. As I became a teen, I was drawn toward biblical literalism and fundamentalism in the Church of Christ. I thought I knew the religion well and had a personal relationship with my Savior, Jesus Christ.

But I realized that I had this large tome called the Bible and the only time I ever actually read any of it was when I was told to read a particular passage during worship. I would then sit there in the pew and listen to what was being told to me with complete faith and trust that this person was anointed by God to deliver His message to me. Until one day I decided I would start reading it for myself. Obviously, that stirred up a lot of questions and those questions were NOT well received by elders. In fact, I was once told that, because of all this new questioning, I was possibly psychopathic and should seek mental health treatment.

Over the years, I first became a non-attending, and then a non-practicing Christian. I became quite isolated but felt that this made my personal relationship even stronger by not having these outside influences. I dug into the Bible and, to gain the context needed to understand it myself, into history, culture, etc... to try to find the real truth, as God reveals His truth only to those who seek it and truly walk in His grace.

But then, I started to see that grace wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I started to see flaws in the religion. I noticed that many things I had been raised my whole life to believe were blatantly not true. I began to see the hypocrisy and the contradictions. It wasn't long before I was, in my mind, able to completely dismiss the Bible, especially after learning about its history as a document.

Eventually, I became an Atheist but I didn't think ahead to what that really meant. The weight of the religion was gone and I actually felt liberated (which is the wayone is supposed to feel when they're 'saved'). But what happened next took me by surprise. Once one has lost their religion, well... then what?

Many people are raised to believe that everything in our lives revolves around religion. Once you take that away, then it can be very difficult to have any way to frame our lives in such a way as we did in the past. It can seem to lose meaning, purpose, and direction.

But that is only at face-value and often because of the conditioning and indoctrination that was put in place by the religion to keep us in the fold. A life without religion can seem incredibly frightening at first, because we're conflicted between the comfort that religion gave us, and the fact that we can no longer reconcile the religion and what we believe to be true.

This blog will help to address those very issues by helping to provide the perspective that I, and many other Atheists, have come to adopt as both practical and fulfilling. You're not alone, and you don't have to fear the future. In this blog, I will attempt to offer advice and guidance on some of the most prevalent questions around Atheism, such as "where do we get our morals from" and "how do we deal with no longer believing in heaven". This purpose of this blog isn't to try to bring more people to Atheism or to bash on theism or theists, but to help those of us who may be struggling with some very common questions about something that is very personal and informs such a large part of our lives. Thank you for visiting my site and I hope that you find it informative and interesting.

I will try to write new blogs weekly on Saturdays if possible.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Humanism

One of the most potent things about losing one’s religion is that we often feel a big gap left in our lives because our religion informed much of our life’s direction and purpose. It’s very common for religious people to question how someone can live without religion, because they were raised in an environment which put religious belief at the center of existence. The thought is that, if one loses their religion, then certainly they must also be losing their very purpose in life. It’s a common reasoning behind why religious people often dismiss Atheists as misguided, confused, or just going through a phase.

We’re often born into circumstances where our entire community is of a particular religious affiliation, and through extreme peer pressure and social immersion, the community instills the idea in its people, and especially youth, that this is the only way of thinking. Obviously, that is very far from truth, but isolation within a social structure that advocates only a single cultural viewpoint doesn’t leave much room for people to explore their own path.

But if someone takes the path of being Atheist, there’s usually a certain set of conditions that informed that choice. Skepticism is often at the core of it. If someone is highly skeptical, it’s because they care about proof or evidence before believing something. If no religious claim can stand up to scrutiny, then the focus on how we should live our lives naturally shifts from caring mostly about what some deity might think, to caring about the lives of our fellow humans as the single-most important driver in our thought process. This is called Humanism.

But there are many different kinds of Humanism, so it’s important to note which kind. Most Atheists will say they are Secular Humanists. According to americanhumanist.org (2015), “Secular Humanism is an outgrowth of eighteenth century enlightenment rationalism and nineteeth century freethought” (para. 8). The primary focus is on people, and a rejection of all religious claims of supernatural belief. Secular Humanism offers an ethical system to follow. Atheism is nothing more than the rejection of the claim of a god or gods, and so it’s not a system of ethics in itself.

There are many resources on the web to learn about Humanism. It’s important to note that Humanism is NOT a religion. It’s a system of ethical guidance that puts humans first. As a Humanist, one would take the position that we should make the world into a place where people come first.

For a closer look into Humanism, you can search Google and find many different resources. I recommend taking a look at:

https://www.secularhumanism.org