Firstly, I know that there is no god by way of deep metaphysical thinking.  See my article "The Simplicity of Existence" at http://www.atheists.net/pages/simple.html .  The idea of god was brought forth by man to answer the big question but all it does is transfer the big question to god himself.  i.e., How did god himself come into being?

Secondly, my writings are intended to have people live within the truth.  The truth being that they need not be concerned about a god.  This knowledge (once realized) should cause a major behavior change for believers of gods as currently . . .

they are wasting their time praying to an entity that is not there;

they may attribute occurrences in their lives to the god;

they may be thinking that god has more control of the world than themselves;

and they may have less regard for their lives because they believe that they will live forever in a "kingdom" with their god.

Since I have never been in a position of believing in a god I cannot really say what else they may be thinking -- such as "it's ok to fly a passenger plane into an office tower full of workers because my god wants me to", or "it's ok to bomb a city of people that don't share the correct idea about god."

Darwin Bedford
www.atheists.net


At 09:41 PM 9/13/01 -0700, you wrote:

Mr. Bedford,

I would first like to state that I found your site
very interesting, but I am a bit confused with your
strong aversion to organized religion.  No, let me
restate that... though I understand and agree with
your strong aversion to religion, I am a bit confused
with the degree that you have taken it. 
To give you a quick background on me; I had questioned
my own religious beliefs to the point where I had to
discard them for the various reasons that you state
within your writings, and I came to the conclusion
that I could not believe in any religion unless I had
an epiphany of some sort and even then I hoped that I
would be doubtful.  At that point in my life the only
thing that I felt I could do was to educate myself on
why people believe what they believe and hope that
this would give me a deeper understanding into the
unknown.  I have come to various conclusions on this
subject and all of them except one point to religion
being a creation of man.
Anyway, the confusion that I have with your writings
is that what I have witnessed in other peoples
beliefs, I also see in yours.  I thought for a short
while that I was an atheist but then realized that to
assume that I knew that no god existed or that the
ChristianIslamicBuddhistWiccan god was impossible,
took a similar leap of faith as that which the
followers of the aforementioned religions must take.
I felt that man, for one reason or another, must have
an answer to everything.  He cannot accept the
unknown.  The pendulum swings to both extremes and it
seems that everybody wants to jump on at one of the
apexes of its swing, never in the middle.  Are your
writings to this extreme an attempt to neutralize the
negative effects of organized religion?  Are your
beliefs actually more neutral and are you more
inclined to say that you don't know one way or the
other or have you had an atheistic epiphany that has
given you an insight into our universe that the rest
of us searchers are unaware of?
I ask these questions only in an attempt to understand
and of course for the chance to have an interesting
discussion (very possibly more the latter).

Looking forward to your response,



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