[user104658]

Originally Posted by Johnnyuk123

I remember as a child kneeling at the foot of my bed once asking God a question. I never got a response. I wasn't asking for material things for Christmas or to get the math teacher at school that i didn't like sacked. I simply asked him that as the creator of everything why did he create cancer? He never got back to me.

One of the few times I've ever felt that I can relate, Johnny .

I wasn't just raised without religion. I didn't just wake up in my happy bed one morning and decide "nah, not for me". I felt its absence so strongly at an early age that it was never even a remote possibility to consider. I looked at my experiences, and I looked at the world, and it was crystal clear. The world is chaos, it has no intrinsic meaning, and it is pain. The only real goodness in the world is what people have created for ourselves: Art, music, sport and other recreation. Emotional connections - desperately clinging to other humans (or animals) as we hurtle through infinity on a speck of dust.

My own grandmother was fit and healthy, for a 74 year old. She was walking into town... no need to cross any major roads. But she saw the minister of her church across the road and wanted to chat to him about church stuff, so she crossed. She was hit by a car doing 60mph, and hit her head on the road. She seemed OK in hospital... but then she slowly started to lose her mind, with a brain injury. She regressed to a toddler like state like ****ing Benjamin Button over the course of 2 months, being cared for by my mother, and then she died a screaming, terrified death in our house while I sat on my bed in the next room. My mother pretty much checked out of parenting that night and never returned. I was 8. By the time I was 15 she was a full blown alcoholic and had flushed her career down the pan. By the time I was 30 her liver had melted, her face had started to rot off in her hospital bed, and I was sat at her funeral thinking "She died over 20 years ago anyway".

Crossed the road to talk to her minister.

I always thought it was ironic. Then I met my wife... and she told me a story about how her own dear great-grandmother was living comfotably in her twilight years. Happy, content, just liked to make sure she got out on Sunday to attend church. Where she slipped on a stone step and bashed HER head in. And died a slow moaning death in hospital. Thanks again, God! Good going, Jesus ol' pal! Absolute screamer!

Hmmm.

Now I have to wonder... does God simply not exist, or is he just a cruel bastard with the darkest sense of humor imaginable? Is he a full blown psychopath?

Nah. The only logical answer is that he does not exist. When you get older and start to add in things like a greater understanding of the scale of the universe, logic, reasoning, multiple varied religions based purely on geography, a quick look at the political origins of organised religion... et al... it only becomes even more obvious.


People have the right to believe whatever they want to believe, that much is true. That doesn't mean that the rest of us have to smile and nod and pretend that any of it is ****ing vaguely plausible. It bugs the **** out of me. I also find it strange that the "right to believe what you believe" only seems to extend to the religious and not the non-religious. The non-religious, apparently, have to pretend to believe that it's all valid and possible even if we don't.