I was asked once, while on a court witness stand, why I was an Atheist...
I failed to adequately explain. It seemed like such a ridiculous question with countless small reasons that I couldn't drum up one good one on the spot.
I should have said, "Because I read the whole Bible, in context, and analyzed it critically", that would maybe be my main most tangible reason. But I stuttered and stumbled; faltered while thinking the smug self important lawyer talking to me is too blind to see how ridiculous the question was.
My answer, while still a legitimate answer to the physical question asked, it was not the answer to the question intended. "Be cause I don't believe in Gods.", knowing full well the definition was known to all in the room, but was a passable success of ending my apparent speechlessness. My own utterance added to my confoundment of the situation, I looked incredulously at the smug self assured lawyer and was annoyed at his gull to ask. And even more annoyed by his seemingly proud accomplished reception of my confusion. I'm sure being a dick is its own discipline in law school.
Troubling thing was that it was a question I have longed to answer anyone that would pretend to listen. Warmly thought of as one of my old throw back topics, one that I believe I've settled with myself years ago. But at that moment I was unprepared, more focused on being selected as a jurer than to pour out my ideas on the futility of metaphysics.
I should have said, "Because I read the whole Bible, in context, and analyzed it critically", that would maybe be my main most tangible reason. But I stuttered and stumbled; faltered while thinking the smug self important lawyer talking to me is too blind to see how ridiculous the question was.
My answer, while still a legitimate answer to the physical question asked, it was not the answer to the question intended. "Be cause I don't believe in Gods.", knowing full well the definition was known to all in the room, but was a passable success of ending my apparent speechlessness. My own utterance added to my confoundment of the situation, I looked incredulously at the smug self assured lawyer and was annoyed at his gull to ask. And even more annoyed by his seemingly proud accomplished reception of my confusion. I'm sure being a dick is its own discipline in law school.
Troubling thing was that it was a question I have longed to answer anyone that would pretend to listen. Warmly thought of as one of my old throw back topics, one that I believe I've settled with myself years ago. But at that moment I was unprepared, more focused on being selected as a jurer than to pour out my ideas on the futility of metaphysics.
I wanted the opportunity to see a real court case. To prove to myself that I could have been a better laywer then the smug face prosecutor. It was a double homicide going for the death penalty. Capital punishment, as described to me was in Texas, and for this case, was the murdering of more than one people during the same criminal transaction. If evidence says guilty I would at least paint the second killing as self defense making it not murder, and thus no death penalty. I was really curious be on the jury, and to see the process and the final outcome.Mr. Smug did at least afford me the opportunity to rebase myself, only to afford himself the ability to try and poke holes into my beliefs I quickly assumed. I did at least proceeded to say something along the lines of ~"Physics is the only omnipresent undifyable law that governs all things in existence, if people want to call that God sure, but they usually end up falsely attaching (more often then not self serving) interpretations of reasons for events instead accepting that physics is just a set of unfeeling laws"~. The topic changed, and most of the encounter is deep in the recesses of my untrustworthy human memory.
I wasn't selected.
That said; I felt the need, after that fumbling attempt to explain what has become to me the most obvious truth, to structure and formalize my thoughts. And still haven't done so, but plan to place them here when I get around to it.
A comment I made on reddit summed it up:
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/lg2iix/god_is_utterly_monstrous_stephen_fry/gmp5kj3?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
The simple answer for me was when I read the whole bible, chapter by chapter.
**I realized I was more just than God because I knew slavery was wrong, and he didn't end it or outright denounce it, instead condones it in both old and new testaments.**
Therefore the bible (loose collection of cherry picked man made stories stories curated and manipulated by man and subsequent translation to aid in controlling the lower class) was just a creation of human men with the working knowledge of the time, nothing divine, just free of the constraints of accurate history records and any burden of proof.
People cherry pick short passages to promote some deep life lessons and assume somewhere else in there it answers everything, but it's just a book. We have whole libraries of far more qualified life lessons made by far more qualified regular ass humans. Because (crazy thought) it's been thousands of years, and we figured out some shit and learned a lot more since then.
Religion is the willful regression of 1000s of years of values, morality, and education.
But people (just like flat Earthers) want to believe in something to give themselves purpose or pride or anything to make them feel special.
Edit:
This is a [religious anti-source](https://emergencenj.org/blog/2019/01/04/does-the-bible-condone-slavery) (source against my pov) that confronts this issue pretty honestly.
But fails to adequately dispell the doubt that opened my eyes to the rest of the overwhelming evidence that the Bible is just a book made by people.
& Thanks for the awards and kind words
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