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Catholics, Hindus and Muslims have very different views on what happens after you die and how to get to where you want to go. Even Tibetan Buddhists have a book on death that guides you through the process of reincarnation. The atheist view is the concept that a soul or spirit is a primitive idea with absolutely no basis of fact. The view that religious organizations are using fear on gullible people to get them to believe in these ideals for their own person gain.

If you take a look at Charles Darwin’s work Origin of Species religious groups were very upset with it because it basically spelled out that human beings were not important or more special than any other organism out there. They would agree that every other organism out there that isn’t a homo sapiens doesn’t have a soul, but were not willing to conclude that they themselves didn’t have souls. I think atheists view death a simply the end of our legacy. Our death brings consumption and rebirth of other organisms to exist in this world. That is all it is.

God apparently gave everyone the ten commandments.

• Do not steal
• Do not murder
• Honor your father and mother
• Etc.

The idea was that if morality wasn’t a dictated law from God that society would fall into a horrible immoral place. But did God come up with morality, or did religion come up with it? Could morality be a function of the human mind. Something completely independent of a God? I think so. If you asked an atheist if they thought stealing was wrong, would we get a wide range of answers? Or would be have a consensus that it is wrong?

It is pretty obvious that there would be a consensus because people think it’s wrong. People were born with the power of empathy. This allows people to put themselves in other people’s shoes. We can extrapolate how it would feel. None of us like to have something stolen from us, therefore we know it’s wrong. You can also take a look at other issues such as premarital sex. People can extrapolate whether they think this is wrong. Outside of religion, most people think it’s fine. Where as in religion it’s a sin. I’m not here to say what is write and wrong, but the fact is that morality is a process of the mind, not something dictated from above.

We aren’t special. We are no more important in a sense of life than a dog or cat, but I do believe there is only one chance to live this life. There’s no second chances. There’s no place in the sky or Hell below us. I get one chance to live it up or waste it. I’ll take my chances on living. Make the most of your life. Live the best life you can. Don’t spend time doing things you hate or try to “kill time”. Do things that fulfill you. Do things that make you happy.

Live the best possible life you can, not for God or for other people, but for yourself. What’s the point of doing it if there isn’t a purpose? I’m sure a lot of people are thinking that. To put it simply, we are in the here and now. We have the ability to enjoy ourselves. We have the power to be happy, to love, to laugh, to be excited. Why not enjoy that? There is no purpose to life. There is no divine purpose or a purpose from the universe. All we are is here and now and we might as well enjoy it.

A lot of people would think that’s all it is, but a greater look on life for each person. Usually the disbelief in God isn’t the philosophy, but the conclusion to a philosophy. What I mean by that is most people thing atheist just believe God doesn’t exist. Just that simple. The fact is that atheists usually have a philosophy on life. They look at life a certain way and conclude from that view that there is no God. I have more respect for a person that has a philosophy on life and concludes there is a God, than a person who believes there is a God and looks for a religion.

The one thing that religion doesn’t grant people is the freedom to think for themselves. If you want to be a “good” Christian, than you need to believe everything about Jesus Christ and all the rules that come along with it. You’re not allowed to think about the world and conclude your own answers. If you try to think for yourself, you are left ostracized and left with a sense of guilt. It doesn’t work that way with atheism, simply because you don’t answer to anyone, but yourself.

You believe in your philosophy, not for God, not for society, but for yourself. Atheism has another great aspect and it is the desire to learn. Religion works on the idea that you need to accept the teachings, atheism is evolved thought process of taking the time to learn. Taking the time to think about it, to question it, to live it and to accept it. I think that, in itself, is a good thing.

I think it’s all fair to say that happened, but what happened after is when all the made up stories. Jesus was like the Elvis of 2000 years ago. That’s as simply as I can put it. With the death of Elvis all these odd stories came out. Elvis was abducted by aliens. Elvis still lives among us. Elvis will return to us one day. Jesus on the other hand was resurrected. He still walks among us. He will return to us one day.

The way Jesus became such a prophet wasn’t that he was resurrected or the son of God, it was the legend that surrounded him. It grew, as did Elvis’, and people just couldn’t accept that he was gone, so they held onto the idea he was part of a higher purpose. There is no evidence of Jesus’ resurrection and I think holding onto these ideas is really a poor choice. You can put faith in the idea, but I also put faith in that you’re wrong. Faith isn’t enough.

Why not celebrate the greatness of what Jesus did when he’s alive? Why not follow the real human Jesus Christ instead of the mystic and mysterious Jesus that speaks through proxy of Priests? Jesus was a great person that did great things. He wanted a society that loved, but his legend grew beyond himself into a mystic son of God. Follow the example of how Jesus Christ lived, not how people indoctrinated him, just like Elvis.

What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous. … It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God. Get out of that seat. … You have no right to be here!

I find it funny sometimes, but Lincoln didn’t always say nice things about religion; I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. It would appear Lincoln was rational enough to see through the fog of religion. Rep. Davis has issued an apology, but I don’t care. At least have enough guts to own what you believe in, no matter how bigoted it is. You’re crazy. You really are crazy and there’s nothing you can do to erase it because you truly believe it.

Penn Jillette: Penn is an entertainer and magician that is most famous for his place in “Penn & Teller”. He is an outspoken libertarian and an even more outspoken atheist. He also has a Showtime television show that constantly debunks religious ideals for rational thought. This would include debunking creationism to occultish medicine.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Nietzsche was a philosopher and great writer. Many of his writings like Thus Spake Zarathustra associate the ideal that God is dead or doesn’t exist.

Richard Dawkins: Dawkins is probably the most outspoken atheist that takes full assault on religion. He believes that for the longest time religion has been sheltered from criticism and that we need to stop sheltering it. He says that religion is dangerous and that religion is precisely why 9/11 happened.

Ayn Rand: Rand is an atheist like I discussed earlier in this post. She believes that minds we all have are our highest power. We should never look above ourselves for answers when we have a mind to answer it for us.

John Stossel: Stossel is one of the reporters of 20/20 and has brought a lot of great specials to light. One of his greatest reports related to religion was The Power of Belief. The report ended with the following quote from Stossel, “Yes, it will. And the real world’s all we’ve got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better?”

These are some famous atheists that have come out and let everyone know what they think about religion. I think it is courageous of them to speak their mind even though there is still a stigma with atheism.

Here is how I view atheism. It is the ever evolving philosophy on life, in general. We aren’t even close to understanding the universe and things are changing everyday. Religious people would call this weakness in our views, but it isn’t. This is the fact that we proclaim logic above folklore. Religion is ideas thought up thousands of years ago that require obedient belief without questioning. No matter what happens. The Earth is billions of years old. It’s a fact, but people still think it’s 6000 years old.

How can you blindly hold onto views no matter what? That’s idiotic. You have to proclaim a desire for higher knowledge, not higher power. Atheism is the process of critical thinking, it’s the process of wanting to know. Religious people don’t want to know. They don’t want to hear facts. They don’t want to know the truth. They just want to put “faith” into their views. I’ve declared along time ago that I would never be bullied into believing something and religion is the biggest bully. Believe or goto Hell. Follow or be ostracized. I will not follow. I will not be a sheep. I will be my own higher power because, until it is proven otherwise, I’m all I can really be sure of.

 I can hear some people say, “doesn’t that make you agnostic”? No, it doesn’t. I feel agnostic people are cowards and really trying to remain neutral. I suppose came from a philosophical background you’d declare denying God as faith itself, but if you come from the science background, than you declare it doesn’t exist unless there is proof, or at least a reasonable measure of it. The agnostic view is that God can’t be proven he exists or not. But, the fact is you can’t prove negatives. It’s another philosophical anomaly. Why don’t we believe that God is a Dog with really bad flees? Or could God be Britney Spears rat like creatures living on the dark side of the moon? To agnostics, they’d say that’s fair game. To a science background, it’s illogical. Giving some sort of pass to someone that obviously made up a story is intellectual suicide.

If you think you’re smart, you can’t just accept these stupid ideas as rational. It’s stupid. This is how we get stupid cults and suicide bombers because people are too weak to say to religious leaders and cult leaders that they’re idiots. The world be a much better place, not without religion, but with people that would stop blindly following idiocy. If they would just declare a desire to understand, which is an ongoing process. Don’t be sensitive to people’s feelings, tell them they’re stupid. If people could just look through the stuff in the Bible and just put two percent of a thought into it, the world would be a better place.

Ayn Rand viewed the idea of God or a “Higher Power” as a slap in the face to mankind. The view is that looking above yourself for power is basically selling yourself short. Objectivism isn’t like atheism. Atheists reject the idea of God.

Objectivists view that the mind is your higher power and that you shouldn’t be looking above yourself in anyway. They also view that the mind needs to be expressed in this life, right now and not spend your time following some religious rules to hopefully get benefits in the next life.

Objectivists feel that each and every human needs to use the full potential of their mind. They need to live the best life they can and to do as much as they can to live a fulfilling life. The idea of wasting your life, sitting around, following God, is disrespectful to them. Now to the reason people end up hating her view is because it’s promotes the ideas of individuality. Most people feel they believe in individuality, but they don’t. People naturally clamor to follow what everyone else in society. For example, in her book “Atlas Shrugged” she viewed the heroes as business owners that effectively go on strike against excessive government regulations. People don’t like that views because essentially they don’t believe in individuality as she does. This is effectively what moral Objectivism represents. It is about the human mind being the highest power and the individuals in society being the heroes.