Name: Andrew Herzman
Year Born: 1964
Location: Long Island, NY
Label: Atheist
Former Religious Affiliation: Catholic
Where Do I Begin?
I was brought up Catholic, but never read the Bible. I just went to Church and did the rituals like communion and confirmation, but I never really saw the point of it.
As a child, I overheard my mother tell somebody that a priest admitted to her that religion was all made up nonsense. My mother actually taught me that organized religion is just “smoke, candles, stained glass and other things to impress you”. She made it clear to me that it was important to believe in a “higher power”, and organized religion was not the same as God.
I was lucky to have been brought up that way. As an adult, I am now able to ask myself what I really believe in. There are many reasons why I don’t believe in God.
- Moral values. God believers say they are moral, yet they do immoral things all the time. They think that all they need to do is run to church to confess in private and they will go to Heaven. How convenient! Maybe if they had to look the person in the eye that they wronged and ask for forgiveness, it would actually mean something. That’s what I do and that’s why I avoid doing bad things to other people to begin with!
- The concept of Heaven and Hell. I’m told that God gives us free will, but if we use the free will he gives us and not believe in God, he will torture us forever. That’s not free will. That’s extortion.
- Eternal life. People have a survival instinct. We fight to survive everyday. We don’t want to die, so what greater way to get you to go along with religion than to offer eternal life? No more fear of death! Well, I though about that. I decided that I really wouldn’t want to live forever. Forever is a long time. I think that after a billion years or so, I’d be so board and would know so much that I’d finally say “make it stop”! I think life is worth living because of the fact that we learn and experience new things. We need to be challenged. If we were in Heaven and life was just perfect and we had time to learn every language and everything else that was to know, what would we do? Think about it. No reason to do anything and no way to end this existence of just having to exist! I think having a life and making the most out of the time you have is just the perfect way to make life valuable. Live for the moment you’re alive, not for the “what if” there’s a Heaven afterlife.
- Social acceptance. I recently found an old high school classmate of mine on Facebook. He likes country music, the Republican party and Christianity. For some reason those things go together. In any case, we got to talking and we started to become better friends. When the topic of religion came up, I mentioned that I didn’t think the Bible was true. The look of pure horror on his face was priceless. I don’t remember his exact words, but he basically broke off the friendship and ran for the hills. He insisted that you can’t even believe in a higher power if you don’t take the Bible literally. Wow! I would never choose my friends that way. People have a right to believe what they want, and we should all accept others for who they are and not what they believe.
- Science. I recently took a class in college call “The Search for Life in the Universe”. It was astronomy, biology, physics, math, chemistry and geology all wrapped up into one class. It covered so many topics on the possibility and probability of life on other planets. It really opened my eyes as to how this planet formed and how life evolved to the way it is now. It made perfect sense. When I compare it to the stories I hear from the Bible that involve talking snakes and giant arks, you really have to be ignorant to ignore the science.
I know Atheism is not believing in God and that you can’t hate something to don’t believe to exist. I however, will say that I hate the concept of God. If there really was a God, I’d hate him. As a creator, he would have designed the ultimate unfair situation.
Nobody asks to be born, so we are forced to exist and try to survive even though it is futile to even try.
In addition, we are compelled by hunger to nourish ourselves. The only way to do that is to consume other living things. That means we must kill (plants or animals) against their own survival instinct, in order to try to survive ourselves. Yes, I do believe plants have a survival instinct. Plants try to grow towards sunlight, for example.
Another thing that we are compelled to do is have sex and make new self-aware beings (without them asking for it), so that they too are forced into the same situation of futile survival.
This whole system is really just torture. Here we are, given no choice but to either kill and try to survive another day or end up not existing anymore.
Also, the “reward” for surviving is the slow deterioration of our bodies causing us pain, blindness, sickness and many other problems to deal with.
How could a loving God create a Universe like that?
I now belong to the First Church of Atheism so that I can marry couples who don’t want the word God in their ceremonies.
http://www.atheistmarriages.com/
Tagged with: 1964 • Atheist • catholic • Long Island • New York • NY
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Hi Andrew
You and your mother got it right, religion and GOD are two different things. Religion is a business (a good business infact) like so many other businesses people do for a living.
1. Correct, like in so many other fields there are fakes in GOD believers as well. So the people who are fakes are wrong – where has this got to do anything with GOD’s existence.
2. True GOD has given free will and all HE has asked of human is to live a life without committing any sins or mistakes knowing or unknowingly in thoughts, deeds or words. And since the temptations are so high in this material world HE said it is easy to live as required by HIM if you remember HIM all the time. (HE never said non believers would go to hell – only sinners will)
3. There is no living forever for anyone – earth is a bridge to cross over, most of us have chosen to build houses on it and settle forever – birth after birth, wherein all we have to do is pass this test that we are continously subjected to, in the form of life and go where we belong that is to our spiritual existence with GOD. Has human seen anything beyond the earth other than click some photographs of outer space when it is known there are billions of planets / stars in the universe. So lets not assume that life would be the same everywhere else.
4. Don’t let one meeting with one person decide on whats right or wrong – here i am, a total stranger from the other side of the globe who has connected up, would that mean that i’ll cling on. People meet / people part – it should count for experience not for judgement. (This connection i believe is GOD’s WILL)
5. Science has done it’s bit in making life more materialistically oomfortable or so we’ve come to believe. For a whole lot of them in this world live without the very material comforts we are so used to. Science has done absolutely nothing else infact acheived zero when it comes to understanding GOD or the universe other than capture some pictures which is actually GOD’s creation which we all should be wowed about but sadly we are all wow about the picture taken and not about what’s in the picture or how does one get there. We are still stuck figuring out gravitational force and figuring out speed required to launch satelites further into space to take nothing more than pictures and in some rare case collect some rock.
Read the book ‘Laws of the Spirit World’ by Khrushed Bhavanagiri – this book is about 2 sons communicating to their mother. The story is very elementary but one must understand that it’s a personal experience and the sons would’ve communicated to their mother in way which they know for sure she’d understand, for, she was a homemaker and had no other worldly interests other than her family.
As for killing animals and plants you got it right both have lives only higher and lower form. So food needs to be taken according to the environment we live in and not according to our greed but according to need. Killing animals and eating them is allowed provided you live in areas such as a desert or in Antartica where plants don’t grow.
Sexual organs are provided for if you plan to live a family life, have children and one can overcome the urges if he wants to it is as simple as that and anything that we do out of it is the sin part. Thats my understanding for now there could be more which i’m not aware off presently.
Remember you are on the earth because you chose to come here to speeden your journey to qualify for a spiritual life but when we take birth we forget our past and sadly the material influences in earth are so high that we get stuck and don’t usually look beyond everyday existence. But with a little hard work and focus one can really find his path and work towards achieving our ultimate goal as a human, which is get back to GOD.
I have questions similar to that as well, as to why GOD created an earth such as this and for now i’ve kept that question to ask GOD HIMSELF for all these religious freaks that we come across who preach about their god, are only interested in the business part of it or are their to satisfy their carnal needs.
GOD does not want any rituals or ceremonies but wants each of HIS children to live a life free of mistakes or sins in their thoughts, deeds or words in the truest of the sense, for which HE says if you remember HIM all the time HE’ll help us achieve the same. How many have of us have it in us to go through are normal lives committing zero sins or mistakes knowingly or unknowingly in thoughts, deeds or words. The day we achieve it consistently for a sustained period in life such as our lifespan, we are with HIM. Is that difficult to understand or follow?
And this my friend is one of the ways and there are many such ways to HIM but this i found was most logical.
GOD BLESS
Sanat Attavar
+ 91 96 770 520 70
sanatattavar@yahoo.com
I’m 43years old, single parent of a lovely 14year old boy who presently is in the autism spectrum. My search for GOD started by wanting to know ‘why bad things happen to good people’ and i’ve come to understand it. I did not find GOD through any priests or guru, i found HIM through years and years of seeking answers from HIM directly and seeing every good that happened to me as HIS blessing and every difficulty i faced as my paying back for the wrongs i’d done (karma as it’s known in sanskrit)knowingly or unknowingly and roughly after about 12years of being aware of my actions, thanks to GOD i’ve a decent understanding. But i know i’ve miles to cover to get to HIM but the best part is am not scared or worried or in a hurry, for i know what i’m going through / why i am going through and i know ultimately where i’m going to. The journey is as good as the destination because i’m secure in my thoughts.
2. Revelation 21:8 “But for the cowardly and UNBELIEVING and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
3-5. The burden of proof is on those who make a positive claim. If you claim there is a God, I’ll require evidence to believe you. Personal experience is not evidence for me to believe.
If one wants to know GOD one has to work towards experiencing HIM. There are no short cuts, GOD is not there to amuse us. Evidence is interaction with people who have experienced HIM and finding out for oneself how does the whole thing work.
And with respect to what’s written in the bible, i’ve always said religion is the marketing department for GOD and people have made good businesses of it and have written or interpreted things to suit their whimps and fancies. One need not follow any religion to experience GOD. You need not even call GOD by any name such as Allah / Buddha / Jesus / Krishna instead just call HIM GOD AND seek HIM by being the sincere in your thoughts, deeds and words and you’ll experience HIM. What you and the rest have been doing is pit HIM against mortals who are making a living out of selling HIM in ways which suit them.
Thank you for sharing. It is always nice to see other rational thinkers who try to live life as a good person, and not because they are being blackmailed to.
When you get the act right i.e live a life as a good person CONSISTENTLY then world you get into is totally different from the one we live in. The experiences are surreal – it is to be experieced not bought for a price nor seen and to be copied.