One day in science class I realized that the heart does not speak

I was told to simply listen to my heart and I will know God is real. You might think it's obvious to theists that the heart does not speak, it actually just pumps blood, but bring this up and there is usually a moment of silence. They think about it. I think about it. They decide they are talking about the soul when they say heart.

I've decided that what you are really experiencing is coming from the brain. It was learning about what the heart does, and what it doesn't do that caused me to be interested in the brain. Neuroimaging was fascinating to me, especially because emotions had a place on the map of the brain.

Let me remind you that I was young, and I believed that I could feel god in my heart. I did not believe this because I had felt god in my heart, but because I had been told over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over that that was something that happened in the heart. Not one christian, while teaching me this, ever made mention that they weren't meaning it literally. What they mean is that they do not understand what the brain does, and so they take away from the power of the brain, and they give that power to god and say that it manifests in their heart, or their soul, or their guts. Any place but the brain, because apparently god is not allowed to reveal things to you via the brain. Jesus lives in your heart.

Atheist Blogroll

I joined the atheist blogroll The RSS on the right of my page shows recently updated blogs. That's so neat! My collection in google reader was getting crazy big. (hehehe!)

Atheist Revolution

Atheist Revolution

This is a good idea. I know that being atheist only explains what I don't believe. Right now that seems very important, but if the theists weren't just sitting around letting their leaders act all crazy, only to say, "Just because he represents us doesn't mean he represents us" while doing nothing about it, I probably wouldn't be so quick to show my atheist pride.

The only kind of make-believe I like is drawing pictures of unicorns vomiting rainbows. I don't believe they do, though. That reminds me! I cannot understand why you would take literally a book that was written by ignorant, primitive humans. It's confusing me lately. The bible teaches bigotry, which makes sense considering who wrote it, but it's PAST time to throw out that garbage.

I can tell you that what I believe isn't evil. Just because I do not believe in any gods does not mean that I cannot see the advantages of happiness. I believe in happiness. That includes doing everything in my power to make others happy, to the best of my ability. In case you are confused, that means I don't discourage a woman who is being beaten or mentally abused from leaving her husband, like many many many many many many many christians do. Sticking next to a shitty man because of some ancient text makes sense how? It won't make you happy. It won't. In fact it will piss of the rational thinkers around you who are constantly trying to be there for you and support you and get you to a better place, MOM.

Believing in happiness also means doing what's best for people in a community, or a country. How about this christian nation we call the USA? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The education standards get worse and worse and now we want to call things science that aren't even science. Intelligent Design is not even close to being a science. We already know that, though.

The most important thing that I believe is that when we die that is it. The End. To me this means life is so precious. I don't understand why it would mean that life is meaningless and I definitely don't know why anyone would assume that turning off god means turning off empathy. I still cry, I still laugh, I still experience joy and pain. Empathy must be something theists don't understand. Without god I am still human. Without God I still feel.

No Penis, No heaven

Deuteronomy 23

Happiness

Let me interrupt my story! I need to get this out. I am happy. I believe that happiness is not the absence of depression, but rather it is self-actualization. Why do I think this? Because I am human, and I want to be happy, and I did everything I could to figure out what happiness was, what caused it, and what hindered it.

It was on my way to finding happiness that I denied the holy spirit. Even if there was a heaven, I would not want to spend eternity with you assholes.

Also my favorite use of the word diction is to point out when someone has used the perfect words to describe something. My favorite writers when judged on diction are Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris, and Mark Palmer. Christopher Moore gets an honorable mention, but can't make the list until his number of good books outweigh his number of boring books. That being said, Lamb is my all-time favorite book. If I wanted to sound a little smarter I'd tell you that Sophie's World is my favorite book, but that felt more like necessary learning than enjoyment. I have been holding all of this in for so long.

I'm going to try

I've always wanted to tell the story of my journey from theism to rational thought. I was brainwashed as a child. I went to Jesus Camp. I went to church, usually three or four days a week. I prayed. I believed. I had faith. Then I grew up and exercised my brain. I read books. Christians don't read books. I mean, I did see my dad read a star wars book, once, when we were camping.

I started polling people in my church about what books they read and how often they read. Ninety per cent of them read the bible and only the bible. I understand that this was at one church and was not a nation-wide poll, but my traveling and funds for my research were limited, as I was eleven. To learn that the majority of adults in the church cut themselves off from learning anything else was scary to me. I felt alone. To top it off, that other 10% only read books by Christian authors. There was one male in the entire church that I found that had read a variety of books. He was new to Christianity, and was not sure that he would be staying long. He didn't.


Tune in next time for: "One day in science class I realized that the heart does not speak. "