I am a Simple Minded Man

I am a simple minded man.  It cannot be true that the Bible is the holy word of a supreme being with ultimate and total knowledge and power because the Bible is often wrong.  Men who wrote the Bible did so, according to myth, via divine inspiration, recording words as though dictated by this Supreme Being.  If so, the Supreme Being is flawed.  One cannot have it both ways:  The Bible is true.  The Supreme Being knows all and is all powerful.  One or the other must be flawed.  If it is the Supreme Being, then we should stop worshipping the charlatan.  If it is the Bible then we should stop reading it.  Regardless, we are done with faith in the false, belief in the beyond, and hope for a life everlasting granted by a flawed and fallacious being that does not exist and is supported by a book full of false statements, errors and omissions.

I am a simple minded man.  If the Holy Spirit can enter me and control me and speak through me (and in the case of Mary, have sex with me, so the story goes.  A host of other simple minded questions comes to mind:  does God have sperm?  DNA?  I’ll stop there) and if God knows all that I am thinking and all that I am doing and holds me accountable for everything, then in what way am I free?  In what way do I have free will?  In what way can I escape the surveillance of a deity?  If I cannot escape such surveillance, and if I am accountable for all that being sees me do and hears me think, and that being is capable of taking over my body, I am in no way free.  I believe I am free.  I think, therefore I am.  I can find nothing in my life that I have ever done that was not a result of my doing that thing.  No other entity has ever made me do anything.  I hear that I have said or done things while unconscious or under the influence of anesthetics.  Things I do not remember.  Things I do not feel accountable for.  But, everything I do remember I am accountable for.  Therefore, there must not be a supreme being who constantly surveils us or controls us or punishes us.  Is my sense of freedom and my sense of personal accountability false?  How would I know?  I would know if I performed in some way as a puppet contrary to my wishes.  That has never happened.  Therefore, there is no supreme being who monitors and controls me.

I am a simple minded man.  If I pray to a supreme being and he or she does not respond, is there a supreme being?  Can I say that he or she simply disapproves of my request, or that he or she has a plan for me that is more powerful than what I plan for me?  If the plan of the Supreme Being yields the death or injury of those I love and yields my failure to obtain those things I wish to obtain, why would I worship a deity so hell bent on being mean to me?  Sometimes my prayers seem to be answered, but in retrospect the things I wanted came to be by direct action on my part or on the part of some other person.  I see no divine intervention.  If prayer results are random not predictable, why pray?  How could a supreme being listen to 7 billion prayers?  No, prayer is totally irrational, or is heard by a selfish and mean deity and therefore I shall cease.

I am a simple minded man.  If the Supreme Deity sent his son to earth then allowed him to be killed, why would I want to follow such a being?  If the Supreme Being proclaims that he or she is love, then why would he or she condemn me to an everlasting hell because I act as though I am a human being?  If the Supreme Being created me in his or her image, why does he or she not allow that my appetites are by his or her own design and therefore I cannot be responsible, much less cursed for all time?  No, the Supreme Being cannot be love and cannot love us if he or she is so eager to send us to hell.  Why would I worship a being so eager to hurt us forever?  I will not.  And why couldn’t this all powerful all-knowing being figure out another way to offer humans forgiveness for being human other than allowing his son to be executed?  Dah. 

I am a simple minded man.  I am an atheist.