jesus don't love me, no one ever carried my load

I feel fortunate to have lived without religion as a dominant factor in my life. It was very loosely present throughout my childhood, in the way that I feel it is for many people without very religious parents. Just because I never personally went to church or prayed before meals or anything like that, I still knew religion was "important." I still knew God existed and a little bit about Adam and Eve and all the basic Christian knowledge that gets thrust at someone who has interaction with media and other human beings. Of course I knew people, families, who were more or less religious than mine, of course I saw a thousand TV shows that brought the subject up, answered questions just as they caused me to ask more. But it was never a very solid thing, it was just something that I generally accepted, blindly followed, as children are wont to do. I really cannot pinpoint the exact time I started to doubt any of those things. I would guess I was around 13 or 14, around the time where I was becoming fully capable of thinking for myself, not following blindly anymore, and when religion started presenting itself once again as a subject to think about more closely.

Whenever it began doesn't really matter. All I know is that almost immediately upon thinking about religion myself, really just sitting down and contemplating God, I knew I was a non-believer. I don't know where those thoughts came from considering I had much less often encountered people who didn't believe than did. It was like they were just there the whole time, like I was ready to not believe as soon as I let myself get there. I'm a logical person, this I know. I almost failed math and science in high school more times than I can count, but I appreciate them and what they mean. I trust science, I trust things that can be experimented with, things that can be proven to the best of our knowledge, things that can be seen or touched or heard, things that are in some way tangible to us. That's not to say I'm not infatuated with the idea of thought or imagination, the idea of philosophizing, but I use those things as a way to escape, as a way to stretch my mind and contemplate that whihc we don't know. They're simply there for the purposes of exploring, not impacting my everyday existence. The idea of God would alter my life, maybe its meaning. It wouldn't do so directly, but it would be a a constant presence. If something that huge, something that tells me where I and everyone else on this Earth came from, I want to know about it, I want it to be proven. There is no way to know if God does or doesn't exist, and that alone is enough to make me sceptical, enough to make me back away from the idea.

I've never really felt the need for religion in my life. I don't need it to tell me why or how I'm here; for that I go to Darwin. The only thing I could ever personally see myself reaching out to religion for is in times when comfort is needed, when I seek solace that I'm not alone, that someone always loves me, is watching over me. That idea, to me, has always been religion's most appealing factor, the thing that I could see myself relating to. But it's not one I've ever needed, even at times when I have felt completely alone and worthless in the world. At my lowest lows I've never asked God for help, I've simply looked within myself and willed to get to another day, hoping that that one would be better. They're not always better, but time goes by and eventually I find I make it out of situations whether they are resolved or not. A big dude in the sky seems comforting, but I am more compelled to look to myself, to those around me, to the beautiful things I see when I look out my window when needing that comfort, when needing to remember it is worth holding on, that times will get better.

That all brings me back to my first point, the idea that I feel fortunate to have not had religion. I can't shake the feeling that I would only find it a burden, a constant pressure on my existence. As an atheist I'm obviously biased in that. I have no doubt that had I been raised differently, had something down the line been a little different and made me a believer, I would probably not find religion to be a burden at all. But from my vantage point I feel so free without the worry of my afterlife, without feeling external guilt for my sins, without remembering to say my prayers or read my Bible before bed. I love that I don't look at a beautiful garden and appreciate God for being able to make such a thing, that I look at that garden and thank science, thank evolution, thank the bees who keep it pollinated. I like knowing that I'm human, nothing more or less, that my existence isn't of great or little importance, it just is. I'm here and I make decisions and those choices won't haunt me or affect me later on, or when I've passed away. Those are the things that are comforting to me, not the idea that Jesus died for my sins. I don't want that and I've never wanted that. I didn't ask for that. I just want to be me and appreciate the natural world we live in, a world that is already SO astounding and amazing and, in the literal sense of the world, awesome, without it being created by some great Deity. Despite the fact that it was created by some great Deity. This is all here because of science and big bangs and minuscule dust particles. I make it through each day because of the passing of time, because of statistics and human nature. I'm free to make the choices I want to because I'm not predestined in any way. That is what I'm grateful for. Perhaps my mind will change at some point, I'm not so close-minded as to think it couldn't happen, but I have never had any inclination that I want to give those things up, that I want those freedoms to be marred or hindered by religion, and I can't imagine that I ever will.