I found no god!

You hear about people who live wasteful lives until one day they wake up and find god.

I used to believe in god as a child/early adolescent, but now I don't and it's been completely liberating.

Now I think that anything anyone does is based on their natural selfish instincts - including seemingly selfless acts. 

Realising this has given me a whole new invigorating perspective on life and helped me grow in confidence in myself.

I no longer see morality as what I'm being told to do - or not to do - by a god. 

Instead selfishness is the rule and people are shaped by their nature and nurture and kept in check by the systems of control, such as the laws of their society. 

Learning to kill

I practice karate and have been doing so for many years now. It struck me yesterday, when I used an Iaitō (metal sword) for the first time, that I am learning what would have once, in some form, been imperative to being able to stay alive.

I don’t really have to worry about that in my life (although knowing such things could come in handy in a sticky situation). But I find it incredible to imagine that there was once a world where knowing how to kill and how to do so efficiently was actually a practical skill to have.

Of course so much must go on behind the scenes; like the anti-terror squads and not to mention the soldiers who are killing people on a daily basis. But those are things that I could very easily turn a blind eye to in my world (until they happen to me of course).

In my world killing is wrong; not only because of the law but because it also feels wrong in my bones. I have been taught that life is sacred and, although I am atheist now, the moral teachings of my childhood still ring true.

Did the men who were trained to kill feel the same? Did they view life as sacred like I do now? Where does the idea of life being sacred come from?

A test of faith

I used to think the fact that I am here as a living thinking being was proof of a divine creator. How could I (or anything) exist otherwise? Why is there something rather than nothing?

I am told that God purposely hides away from us so that we must believe without seeing. If that’s the case, and he wants to test our faith, then surely the fact that there IS something rather than nothing is the total opposite of hiding away.

You could argue that science’s advancements such as the theory of a Universe from nothing could have been designed by God as a test of faith; tempting people to be atheist on the grounds that there was no apparent need for a creator.

But why hide yourself by creating a universe that looks as though it could come into existence entirely naturally and in doing so remove yourself from the equation?