Introduction

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”   I Corinthians 13:11

Introduction

It seems that I grew up in church.  In my childhood, three generations of my family attended church together every week.  I attended Sunday School in the morning, and youth fellowship and choir practice Sunday evening, and sang for services at least once a month.  Sometimes I sang with the adult choir, which met on Wednesday nights.  My grandparents were missionaries and my great-grandparents were missionaries; my uncles and cousins were ministers.  I worked on a Boy Scout religious award for a year, including service hours at the church every week.  I was an altar boy.  I read the bible cover-to-cover by age fourteen. I performed in church music productions and knew every nook and cranny of our old, cathedral-like church.

Here is a photo I called "Empty Church", taken decades later.  This was my usual view, from the altar boy's chair.  

But questions nagged at me for my entire life.  Sometime in my late 40s, I stopped going to church.  At age 60, when I described myself as an atheist to a friend, he asked me to write down my reasons.  This blog is the result.  I will consider various aspects of religion and Christianity, such as the soul, prayer, the Bible, God as Creator, Sustainer, and Judge, heaven and hell, and Satan.   I have a few thoughts about the politicization of Christianity.  Through all of this, I will be considering how religious beliefs align with other things we know about the world from science, experience, and observation.  I will ask some peculiar questions, such as whether a virus has a soul, and whether the people on the Titanic forgot to pray.  I’ll consider the problem posed by Steve Martin: “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”.  I’ll be asking whether religion is good according to my standards of right and wrong.  And most of all, I will ask whether religious belief makes any sense.

I know that religious people are often the happiest people I know.  They often have the clearest sense of family and enjoy the fellowship and affirmation of belonging to a church.  They are able to disregard worries, because they believe that no matter what happens, it will be as God decided.  They have faith that God exists, and that God is good.  So if you choose to read these posts, understand that I will be challenging that belief and that comfortable happiness.

To live in happiness under a falsehood seems wrong to me.   My worldview is now less settled, with the realization that the future of mankind does not depend on an invisible power, but depends on us. 

I have no interest in debate.  I am simply sharing my thoughts, as my friend asked.  I will not read nor respond to comments.