I had been putting together another article for today but some other, relevant issue has gotten me all pissed off.

I recently joined some Philippine Atheist mailing lists and have been so highly disillusioned by them that I’m almost ashamed to consider myself an Atheist. Almost. Thankfully, I quickly came to realize that I more exemplify being an atheist than several of the people there.

The reason for my disillusion? The acute hate of religion. Now, I’ve said time and again that I’m more of a hater of religion, myself, than an atheist. I now take that back. I’m more of an atheist than a hater of religion.

Many people on that list seem to blame the Catholic church for everything that’s wrong with the Philippines today. Whenever an issue comes up, they find some way to point the blame on the Catholic church on it’s influence over our local government. Although, it’s true to some extent and the Catholics have been a hindrance to some aspects of our development as a country, it’s not the only blame.

Case to point: overpopulation. There was an ongoing discussion about the reasons for women turning into “baby factories.” I being blunt said that it was because of economic reasons and their children were being used as a means for alleviating poverty. I was almost immediately attacked for that, which I thought to be incredibly inane. These detractors were so blinded by their hate for the Catholic church that they refused to see any other reason behind the baby factories outside of “the church is against contraception.”

Such narrow mindedness.

Today, another person was defending religion by saying religion in itself was not directly responsible for acts like 9/11 or the spanish inquisition. He (or she, I’m uncertain) was immediately attacked and accused of being religious himself! Which is, again, incredibly stupid.

Atheists pride themselves on their rationality. It’s the backbone of the most notable of atheists. Hating religion, although a common trait among atheists, is not a defining factor. After all, all religions hate other religions as well. These people, several of who are, sadly “prominent” Philippine atheists and “leaders” in the belief are pure disappointment. They have no rationality or logic in their arguments. It’s as if they’ve got some beef against the Catholic church and are using us, free thinkers as an avenue for their ultimate goals.

They are no different from any religious organization. They belong to the religion of “No God.” Anyone who does not believe in their deity, No God, is surely the enemy and must be destroyed. They make me sick. In their quest to eliminate religion, they have become that which they most hate. It’s sick, it’s sad, it’s pathetic.

I’m going to stay on said lists because there are still those there who think like myself. We do not acknowledge the existence of a god and we’re comfortable and happy with our stance. We do not need to blurt it out to the world, we do not need to justify it. It simply is. Sometime, somewhere, we came to the realization that religion is a myth, and that has brought some degree of contentment in our lives. We aren’t angry, we aren’t militant, we don’t have to prove a point to anyone, we don’t have to show the world we’re atheists. We pursue what is the truth in our hearts.

We are happy.

We don’t have to obey anything the Bible tells us to do, or believe in what it says. We don’t have to obey anything the Qur’an tells us to do or believe in what it says. We don’t have to obey anything Richard Dawkins or Charles Darwin or their peers tell us to do, or believe in what they say.

We are happy.

We don’t have to hate Christians, Muslims, Hindus or Pastafarians. We don’t have to hate Yahweh, Jehova, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We are not required to dislike anybody.

We are happy.

We are free thinkers, satisfied only when our own intellect tells us something is satisfactory. There are those that guide us but there is nobody that leads us. We are Atheists. I am Atheist, and I am proud to be an Atheist, I’ve attained true enlightenment.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 1:25 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.