Before I knew who you was...I felt the world!
G.L.

     I am a 55 year old man and I am an atheist. I am of average intelligence and have a bachelors a degree in mathematics, and I have an exceptionally strong desire to learn - I am a lifelong learner. To my regret this strong desire to learn has been greatly frustrated by my inability to understand many ideas that demand high levels of reasoning and an exceptional memory. In fact, I am a man with average capabilities in almost every way one can describe a human being from head to toe, except for my strong desire to learn. So please excuse me if I do not write well or express myself clearly but I must work with what I have.

     It is not easy for me to write. Of course talent for writing is a gift; I do not have this gift. I apologize if I embarrass myself - but someone must play the fool for those more talented and have the ability to compare, contrast, reason and sing language more elegantly than I.

     This I know of myself: language bewitches me and I am fascinated by it. The sounds of  my language do convey direction, somewhat like a map, and more often than not these sounds lead me to unfamiliar places for which I am not prepared. Often I find myself snared by the weak links that holds together my thoughts - but thankfully they are links that can be easily broken by those more linguistically talented than I and give me new direction. And often I find myself thinking in circles, digging myself into the hard hard ground like a wild dog whose foot is caught in a snare and running itself in circles, digging its own burial trench to soon die thereafter. I realized early in life that if I took a dictionary and began looking up the meanings of difficult words such as "feeling' I would eventually find myself back at the beginning no more satisfied with its meaning than when I started on the journey.  I am on this journey and so are you if you follow this story. You have been well warned - you may end up back where you started and no more satisfied than you were when you followed my journey.

     I am not creative nor do I stand out in the crowd in any exceptional way. I am not an activist nor fight for causes due to my tendency to steer clear of great controversy - some might say this is a weakness and so it may be. So if you are looking for an exceptional mind like the mathematician Bertrand Russell, whose thinking I greatly respect and defer to, or looking for a prominent activist like Martin Luther King or Gandhi, both displaying morale courage I greatly respect though doubt I have the capacity for, you most certainly have come to the wrong place. I am speaking to the average, the common, the mundane, the everyday, the run-of-the-mill, the unexceptional, but the thoughtful men, woman and youth who live from day to day and attempt to eke out a living or attempt to find meaning or purpose in their lives and tend to question the world around them.

     What does being an atheist mean to me? To put it simply - I do not believe in the numerous god concepts that have been put forward by the many religions/prophets that have been documented in human history. It appears, given current statistics that I have come across, at least 90+% of the population in the U.S. are not atheists as I have defined it above. In fact, in reading some research 90+% of the people in the U.S. believe in the concept of gods, the concept of the survival of the soul after death, miracles, the virgin births of prophets,the resurrection from death of prophets, angels, hells a plenty, and various types of heavens that are homes for once living human beings. Therefore, I am most certainly on the margins of U.S. society because of my atheism.

     Please note that I use the word "concept" in my above description of atheism as applies to me. This word, 'concept", suggests the force of our brain to construct a "picture" to make sense of what we discover, invent, and innovate. I propose we conjure up "pictures" and ascribe to these "pictures" characteristics that are often similar to characteristics that we humans tend to have. For example, a god is conceived as strong, intelligent, creative, thoughtful, able to perform acts of kindness and charity, cruel and vengeful, a listener of our thoughts and wishes, able to see all that we do, capable of assigning us to various places once we die, and a never ending set of characteristics of the nature of the god(s) which are beyond the scope of human cognizance. As Christopher Hitchens has stated, the concepts of gods perpetuates a phantasmagoric picture well beyond the Orwellian dimension of the fascist state which wants to construct all our thoughts and control our every move, while using the thought police to pounce on us if there is any slight indication of swaying from "The Way."

     Yes, we humans can discover, invent and innovate. An so it may be with the god concept - a wondrous creation of our amazing developing brain. I may be able to rationalize why I think of the god concepts as I do but I do not expect those who "live in" their god concepts to change their way of understanding, and more importantly I do not expect those who live in their god concepts to change the way they feel their personal experiences. I will attempt to share with you my simple sense of life and my feeling tone for life, which is somewhat like hearing music and experiencing the feelings that music can evoke. My body "speaks' to me and I am compelled to listen.

     But I am also compelled to listen to what the great scientific researchers have shown us - that there are dials within and without our body that can be twisted thereby playing the music of the universe of which we are a part. As I said before "to be is to be in a relationship." And that music played within and without us can be soothing, harsh, monotonous, frightening, wondrous, sexy, confusing and expressive of bodily experiences that in all probability can never be fully conveyed by language but only felt. Nevertheless these dials that can be turned are the facts of our lives and the universe that we are engulfed by and a part of whether we believe it or not. To be, i.e. to exist, is to be in a relationship with all things even if we don't understand this and/or feel it.  I am convinced of this great insight, deemed spiritual by many, as opposed to the religious truths promulgated by so many of its maniacal soldiers acting in behest of their respective gods and prophets.

     The great researchers are mining our universe within and without and showing us who we in fact are. In so doing they destroy our childlike preconceptions of a time past leaving us nothing less or more than to be humbled by our place in the universe. We are forced, whether we want to accept it or not, into the fact of how little control we have over that which is without and within us in the greater scheme of time. We are variable and we change, and even profoundly at punctuated instances in our short lives.

     As I write and consider these dials that can be turned, I experience a sense of combined dread, breathless deference, and wonder. But nevertheless I am inspired by the fact that I do say "I have some control of the dials!" That I look forward to the next step I can take into the warm embrace of another that I want to care for and to be cared by, that I can look forward to the next tasty meal that can be shared with those who give me friendship and solace, that I can look forward to the feeling of oneness with the pleasantness that nature's flora and fauna provides me, that I can look forward to being astounded by the night sky's billions of stars glistening even after there presumed death - it is all these luscious experiences that give me faith, meaning and purpose in the face of the awesomeness of this great mystery that continually reveals its wonders to those who discover the dials that allow us hear the sounds of the universe's music.

     The grand researchers have forced us to stand on our own two feet unlike our ancestors in life who crawled on the ground, bellies in mud, unabsorbed by their place in the world about them. As well these researchers have revealed to us that we, as all species before us, cannot stand forever. All living things come and go. But we can journey together, hold each other tightly and courageously, and face these truths with the spiritual realization that “to be is to be in a relationship” and we are interconnected within and without, whether we like it or not, for better or for worse.