A SHORT GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ATHEISM
ATHEISM IS LOVE
Love is the way to go and Atheism is love. Atheism should not be dogma but
should be perception. It should be the perception about what right and wrong
really are. If God is love, and God exists, then Atheism is the way to God too!
Atheism is not a system of dogma or a cult or a religion. It is a form of
therapy. Atheism can be warm, exciting and liberating. We accept Atheism either
in the sense that there is no God or that if there is we are going to pay no
attention to him which is practical Atheism.
LOVE YOURSELF IS THE WHOLE OF THE LAW
The one thing I am most sure of is that I exist. I am less sure that others
exist for they might be dreams. I can’t dream I exist for I’d need to exist to
have the dream. It follows that reason decrees that the only thing that should
give me meaning in my life is loving myself. If I am healthy, then I love most
what I am most sure of.
Put yourself first. We all do this though many of us pretend that we don’t. When
we help another person we do it not necessarily to feel good as a result of
doing it but to feel good in doing it. When I feel sorry for a sick dog, I help
the dog to improve my happiness for I would be happier if it were better. I
don’t do it to help the dog but because I see helping the dog as attractive.
Everything I do I do because it is attractive in some way. It’s done to satisfy
the attraction. I do nothing without desire. Even when I am forced I want to do
what I do under the circumstances.
The good we do is done to feel good and secure in this world so it is really
about us. We love ourselves in the sense that we value ourselves alone but we
love others in the sense that we enjoy helping them. Strictly speaking I only
care for myself no matter how much good I do for others. I can only care about
others in the sense that I enjoy doing what is good for them. The more you love
yourself the more you are of benefit for others so there is nothing to be
ashamed of.
All acts of malice are motivated by a lack of correct self-esteem. Whatever
tries to harm self-esteem is bad. Whoever damages the self-esteem of another is
not living like a person with self-esteem for it makes it more possible for the
other person to hurt her or him. Secret evil is bad for it still makes you
untrustworthy and if you see yourself as untrustworthy you will see others that
way too and damage your self-esteem.
There are only two things: love and fear. Love is happiness and anything that is
irrational is fear and its parent.
Be your own God and ignore any God that tells you what to do.
ATHEISM AGAINST HATRED
Free will is the power to do something that no force can stop you from doing. It
is entirely your act and you are not forced or programmed to do it. Free will
must necessarily be denied if you want self-esteem. Self-esteem is liking
yourself the way you are and because you like yourself you are able to improve
far more easily because fear isn’t in the way. If you believe that you are not
programmed by your genes, environment, memory and perception then you will
believe that you are a free creator of evil rather than something that is at the
mercy of forces that work through the freedom you think you have.
Free will is not a good belief. Dogs feel free and happy like us. But they have
no free will but are programmed by their instincts and there is no reason to
believe that we are any different. Free will is only an assumption and it is not
right to accuse people of abusing free will without proof. Free will is a
doctrine of hate.
Free to us means feeling free but the feeling is not real and we can be happy
with that.
Only those who deny free will can be believed when they say they love the
wrongdoer but hate the wrong act. To believe in free will and say John was the
origin of a hateful act is to say that John is hateful for John did the act. The
act is inseparable from John for it reveals the kind of person John freely is.
To say that inner forces working through John performed the act rather than John
doing the act avoids calling John hateful. It calls the forces hateful.
Incitement to hatred must be expanded to cover those who preach the gospel of
loving sinners and hating sins because too many use this to hide their hatred of
the persons. They say it is hard to love sinners and oppose sins which is an
admission that they are causing much hatred.
We only do evil because our perception breaks down and we see it as good but it
is for the worst. We are always well-meaning. We cannot do evil just because it
is evil but because we see something attractive or good in it and that is what
we are after. Therefore it is incitement to hatred to call anybody evil or
sinful. No matter how much evil we do it is a mistake that happens for good and
evil are often mixed. When we mean well we cannot have free will so God is to
blame for evil.
It is vital that we never seek to punish people. Yes we must stop them
committing crime but we must never do this in a judgmental way. You lock the
criminal up so that the criminal will be forcibly stopped for a time and
hopefully change before he or she is released but you must see the criminal as a
good person who is a slave to forces that make him or her do inappropriate
things. Judging is hatred and hatred causes fear and thrives on fear.
Self-esteem is damaged and then this results in anti-social acts.
Free will is a religious hypothesis because there is no evidence that it exists
and it would take a miracle to be able to know that it does exist. The state
must throw the doctrine out for it undermines the separation that should exist
between state and religion.
ATHEISM IS LIBERAL
Rules should be confined to the bare minimum for the more rules the more people
who break them have to feel bad about and this harms self-esteem.
It is important that we be as liberal as possible. If you have too many ideas
about morality you endanger yourself and others by having unnecessary rules.
Some things are bad, some good, and some are unnecessary or neutral. Follow
these guidelines that differ from conventional morality and you will never go
wrong.
There can be no security, order or contentment without rules. Some say we should
stick to rules no matter how much harm it does. “Believe in God and serve him
and never do other than these” is a notorious example. Others say we should have
no rules but do whatever makes the most people happiest. The right doctrine is
found when we cross the two approaches and come up with, “Make the rules that
are the best for most of us.”
We should do what is best for most people which means
keeping the rules for it is best to be happy yourself and to make another happy
for two happy people are better than one.
EQUALITY
Nobody should be discriminated against just because they are a different colour,
or because of their religion, sex or sexual orientation. These things have
nothing to do with doing a job or mean that we can’t be friends with them and
they with us.
Does religion have the right to discriminate against people? For example, should
the law force the Catholic Church to ordain women? Some say that private
organisations do have this right. But if people are equal then you cannot say
that because the whole point of saying it is to get people treated equally. It
would be unfair to let the Catholic Church discriminate and the law should be
about protecting equality and not religion for equality has to do with
individual persons and religion is about something that people set up. If people
come first then religion does not. The state comes before the Church for it
cannot be done without. Then the civil law should dominate Church affairs. This
amounts to dominating a few leaders for most of their own followers resent the
power they claim and seek.
The notion that men and women have different roles that they have to fulfil no
matter how much unhappiness this brings on them is as hurtful and fallacious as
it is popular and is blatant sexism. It is sexism making an attempt to look
politically correct. It is arbitrary to say that it is a woman’s job to make the
dinner and a man’s job to fix the sink. Why can’t a man who is better with
children than his wife allow her to be the breadwinner? If you can do the job it
is nonsense to speak of roles. And as for the role of motherhood, men would have
to carry babies if a virus wiped out all women. To assign sexual roles is
simplistic.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
People are happy or reasonably happy while rejecting the doctrine of going to
Heaven after death or having no opinion on it or little faith in it. They show
that belief in an afterlife can be lived without. Anybody who needs the doctrine
is not trying hard enough to be happy now.
We know that human life is absolutely valuable. It is more valuable if this life
is thought to be the only one because if we die and live on then death isn’t so
serious. If human life is absolutely valuable then anything that reduces that
importance is to be forbidden. Faith in an afterlife is therefore evil and if
apparitions and miracles support that faith they are evil too and their evidence
stands for nothing and their influence is a grave danger that must be fought by
debunkers.
We should see value in our lives because there is no afterlife.
CHURCH AND STATE
Do not give the Church any money to pay its clergy, maintain its Churches and
publish its ideas. Pay charity instead. The Church is not a charity and should
not be taking money that charity should get.
The Church must be made to pay taxes like everything else. A system that offers
no proof for its teachings being correct has no right to accept a tax-free
existence.
Religion should be a private affair. People like us who believe that religion is
offensive and harmful should not be harassed by seeing religious statues in
public places, by prayer in schools and by public displays of faith.
The state should not be influenced by religious dogmas. The state is for looking
after this world not the next. It is a lot easier to decide what laws are best
if you keep faith out of it for everybody has a different faith. To believe in
an all-good God is to say that God deserves to be put first. So belief in God
then is intrinsically opposed to the autonomy of the state and is intolerant.
Children are impressionable and vulnerable and must never be exposed to
religious propaganda in state schools. That is child-abuse. Children may only be
given religious education in a comparative way at school so that the child can
make up her or his own mind. However, there is nothing wrong with these lessons
focusing on what is good in each religion so that the child will grow as a
person through what he or she learns.
I must promote secularism (separation of religion and state) because it looks at
problems and their solutions only on the human level. I must resolve to correct
anyone who opposes secularism. If we start bringing in gods and magic into our
politics we will end up getting nowhere for no two people can agree on what
their deities want us to do so it is simpler to keep the state secular. It’s
hard enough to decide and do the right thing when you take one world into
account without involving God’s world as well. There is no other way. It is not
enough to stop the Church meddling in the affairs of the state – the Church will
still be able to manipulate the state if it has an undue influence on the
people. The taxpayer should not have to pay the state and the Church to let the
Church spread its propaganda in the schools to the vulnerable and easily
conditioned. It is important to get people to look with clarity at all issues
from as many angles as possible so the secular voice must be raised caringly but
loudly and firmly.
Secularism is definitely against the law of God because God commands faith as a
duty and says his law comes first and that his right to his opinion comes before
yours for he is the perfect being and deserves all honour. This is incompatible
with the view that the state should run as if the word of God didn’t exist. It
seems that only Atheism avoids what is in effect treason against the state.
ATHEISM AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT
Atheism alone can give self-esteem and so it gives you the power to look at
yourself and like what you see because:
It tells you to think for yourself without any God. It puts value on your own
independent opinion and thinking. The more rational you get the more self-esteem
will be possible for you for self-esteem cannot come to the person who is not
sure of her or his position in the world. Fear causes all evil so to make
yourself agree with God means you are afraid of him and that is bad.
It tells you, that despite the wrong you do, are perfect as you are. You are not
a bad person but a person that is the victim of bad perception that makes you do
bad things.
It delivers you from hatred for it denies free will, and therefore takes away
any reason or excuse to hate anybody.
It tells you that happiness is not in anything outside yourself. It is in your
hands. It is not other thing that make you happy but how you react to them.
Anybody who says you find happiness in God is cheating you. If you find God
makes you happy then it is the way you have made yourself feel about the idea
that does it so it is you not God that has done this. Atheism frees you from
illusions.
If people see your Atheism and how loving it makes you even if they hurt you
they will not take much pleasure in it or really want to because they will see
that your Atheism will benefit them and seeks only their benefit. They will
admire the honesty that stops you pretending that sinners can be loved and their
sins not loved. If they hurt you because they are jealous then it is a
compliment.
Meditation by perhaps concentrating on your slow breathing for five or ten
minutes is better for you than prayer. Prayer is trying to put your future in
the hands of another but meditation buts your fate in the person you feel safest
with, yourself. You know yourself best and you love yourself more than anything.
So meditation is best.
When you breathe you could imagine that you are breathing with a force that
makes you want to smile. Smiling is good for you and you will soon get the
feeling that this force is really putting a smile in you.
If you look after your outer self more than your inner self the inner self will
soon progress and be enveloped in happiness. Do not put your spirit before your
body. If we look good we feel good and the admiration of others is good for us.
