Facebook Certified

Finally changed my religious belief on facebook to Atheism.

I know. I'm the poster child for revolution I am.

But I felt that it was something that had to be done. Not because of that shit that nothing is official before it's announced in a (one can only hope) witty status update. No, I thought if I believed in something this strongly, I should have the guts to announce it to the world.

Now, I say the world. but I really mean my old teachers, some people from school you assumed were normal but then decided to get all wise and preachy and shit, and that one Aunt who social custom dictated I had no choice but to accept as a friend.

Y'know. All the judgey ones.

I've been a facebook certified atheist for a week now.

I was smug and content about it for all of a bloody day. It drove me nuts. I thought about it, and thought about it, had breakfast, thought about it some more and then realised, I'm not really an atheist either. I've been a shit atheist. Yes, I wholeheartedly believe that god doesn't exist, and anyone who holds to religion in a capacity other than as a basic, moral guide deserves to be disappointed when there's no big after-party in the sky. And yes, I think that faith schools are the stupidest thing mankind has ever created, second only to facebook's new timeline rubbish. But I don't think I could ever believe in a system of complete non-belief either. It's hard to explain.

I'm going to try anyway. This is not going to be a theological masterclass, but be patient with me.

Richard Dawkin's 'The God Delusion' and the related documentary 'The Root of All Evil?' shaped a lot of my adolescent theories on god and religion. And for a long time, the man was salvation for a confused 14 year old who didn't 'ooh' and 'ahh' when a religious group teacher (for lack of a better word) told the class that her relative had been cured of cancer after she'd seen god. So I read everything and anything I could get my hands on. Books, articles, blogs, even bleedin' Quote Garden. I watched the documentaries with headphones on, just in case. And it made sense. The religious were zealots. Unrelenting and unyielding to the point of idiocy. Before you dispute this, I suggest you google 'the pope' and 'condoms'.

But then, atheists also have the tendency to turn into Grade A nut-jobs. Dawkins, sadly, has become one of them.

He quotes in his book, "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Religious texts were most certainly not faxed down from heaven for your reading pleasure, but I cannot agree to a world that science has sanitised for my use. I can't believe in a theory that dragons never existed. We just haven't found them yet. Hogwarts (or its equivalent) didn't forget me, the owl just died somewhere over China trying to get my letter all the way to Malaysia. I think stonehenge was built by giants. I believe in magic. The greeks really had flying horses. Mutants walk amongst us.

And I understand that the above quote is a metaphor, but I really wouldn't mind some fairies in my garden.

I will never believe in god, at least, not a god that the many variations of monotheist rubbish demand I bend knee to. But science and secularism, in the way Dawkin envisions it, doesn't have all the answers either. And to say they did would make them no better than the bigots they're trying to one-up. I cant be 100% skeptic, and I refuse to be labeled as agnostic. In conclusion? I have no idea what I am.

So today, I've changed my religious beliefs on facebook back to what it used to be.

I am a Jedi.
Because if I'm going to believe in anything, its going to give me the ability to move shit with my mind, and give me an excuse to speak like Yoda.

May the Force be with you.

nk