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So what made me change my mind?  What made the programming collapse like a house of cards in a light breeze?  It was a great many things.

I can trace it back, indirectly, to the successive admission from my parents that the popular demigods of my childhood, were in fact, imaginary.  By demigods, which are defined as beings who have more power than a mortal but less than a god, I mean Santa, The Easter Bunny and The Tooth Fairy.

These demigods were believed in, without question, by me.  I argued all evidence away by citing the 'fact' that my parents would not lie to me and they could.. not, in the case of Santa, afford to buy me all the presents I received.  The only way the 'spell' could be broken was through my parents.

Once it was broken it severed connections in my mind that were keeping my god-belief strong. Magic must exist because Santa does.  That was my rationale for believing what was shown in magic shows was real.  Without magic; belief in miracles, god(s) and the supernatural is a hard sell.  But still I was  taken.

I was taken for the same reasons that many of our populace is taken.  We all like to fit in and be accepted and follow the traditions of our culture.  It is this herd mentality that leaves us so vulnerable to widespread programming such as religion. 

We are also susceptible to such bizarre beliefs because of a psychological characteristic hard at work in our minds at all times.  This characteristic is the tendency to anthropomorphize everything -- especially things we don't understand.  This means we attribute human characteristics to things not human.  For example, if your computer starts acting up and will not work properly, what is a common response heard to this dilemma?

"My computer hates me!", someone would say. ..

Now we all know that computers are not alive and hence feel no emotion.  A computer hates a person as much as a rock does.  Yet, still we tend to think of everything as if it were alive and just like us.  That is anthropomorphization.

How does this characteristic account for all religion you might be asking? Where is the correlation?  To see the correlation one has only to look at the Aztecs.  They were devout followers of a sun cult.  But how could anyone worship the sun? .. Anthropomorphization.  They put a human face on the sun and gave it, through their imagination, all the attributes of a leader.  You see this transposition all throughout religion with wind gods, corn gods, moon gods, volcano gods...the list goes on and on!

This phenomenon is ubiquitous in the advertising field!  You have talking candies that worry about being eaten, are hungry and have sexual desire.  There are Toucans who love the smell of super sweetened cereals and sing to you to follow them and even talking piggy banks that use sarcasm to teach you the importance of saving!  Everywhere you turn there is an inanimate object or piece of food trying to sell you something!

Even events have been anthropomorphized, with the most popular example being death.  Death is often characterized as a male skeleton with a black, tattered robe and a sickle.  Recently, as a result of the surge in feminism and equal rights for the sexes, the grim reaper has now been somehow transformed into a woman -- as has the xian deity, Satan, according to some movies!

The funniest example of anthropomorphization can be found in many undereducated Christian communities around the globe.  Whenever this phenomenon rears its ugly head, one can only shake his head and laugh!   What could I be talking about?  ..What could be so hilarious about a 'miracle?' I'm talking about the 'sightings' of Jesus or Mary in or on just about anything.  Nothing polarizes the devout like a good picture of Christ in a coffee stain!  Or a smudge on a window, a burn mark in toast, or the grain on a wooden door.... 

I once saw a piece on a respectable news program about a 'sighting' of Mary in a chocolate ice cream splatter that was on the sidewalk!  Of course, they showed the faithful gathered around the immaculate deception, praying and chanting, with the predictable occurrence of women breaking out in tears.  Candle lit vigils were held, songs were sung --- to the stain, and the news caught it all on film.  Sometimes truth.. is much stranger than fiction.

Anthropomorphization, though, is something I realized much later.  It wasn't even a factor in my deconversion.  It only served to cement my position that much further.  At that time I had already had 'atheist' tattooed across my stomach, so suffice to say, I was extremely committed!

The realization that it was behind all religion came one stormy night while I was at work.  I was sitting at my desk listening to the sound of the storm overhead.  As I often do, I started thinking about what primitive man would have thought of such an awesome event.  How would he answer the questions of how and why the lighting and thunder is, with no knowledge of science?  He would not understand the complex concepts of storm formation, static electricity or conductivity.  He would not understand that thunder is merely super heated air molecules slamming into each other. 

All that he would be -- would be afraid.  And he would anthropomorphize.  He would  see the flash of electricity arcing from the sky to the ground and hear the loud sound that followed and wonder what 'person' was making that awful noise. .. He would assume, since storms are violent acts and can kill, that this 'person' must be angry.  And whoever 'he' is must be very powerful for the sound is very, very loud and the storm clouds are huge, covering the entire sky sometimes!  Yet he saw no one.  'He' must be invisible!  And hence, a god is born.

The main contributor to my deconversion was, yes, you guessed it, science.  Science was the golden key that ultimately freed my mind from the shackles of religion.  Science taught me to always ask questions, always investigate, analyze and dissect.  If a theory didn't pass a battery of tests to prove its validity: throw it out.  And out religion went!

Faith, by its very definition, is unscientific.  It says to believe a set of hypotheses strongly without any evidence.   What scientist could ever get away with that?  What scientist would have a job if he presented a hypothesis that was not backed by, at least, months of detailed research?  What kind of a scientist would not only present a hypothesis without any supporting evidence, but then, threaten you with torture for the rest of your life if you didn't believe it, word for word, no matter how stupid and utterly ridiculous it sounded?  And yet this is exactly what many religions preach on a daily basis!

Knowing they are short on evidence, religions generally rely heavily on threats and rewards.  They use threats of punishment to keep the brainwashed flock from asking too many questions that might lead to deprogramming.  They attempt to scare them so much that they'll be too afraid to leave the herd.  Organized religion is a billion dollar a year industry.  They cannot afford for their cash cows to realize that their never was a fence there all along.

As for rewards, religions tend to promises an awful lot, yet conveniently say you must wait for the bulk of it till you die.  What a great scam!  Promise a person the world, take their money, force them to follow your rules and then...never have to give them anything!

What if the lottery worked this way?  What if they told you that you had won but when you went the claim the prize they told you had to be dead to claim it?  How would you react?  A normal person would see right through that bold faced lie.  And yet, few see past the lie of religion. 

But I was one of those few.  I, despite threats of hell from some of my more religious friends, accusations of Satanism by others and rejection by xian girls, stood firm in my position because I knew I was right and nothing anyone could say or do would change that.  I also knew that somewhere out there was a beautiful Atheist woman just waiting for me to sweep her off her feet!..

I eventually did find such a woman, who I love ..very much.  And now, after many, many countless hours on the phone, over a year of living together and the birth of our first child, Epicurus, Yvette and I were married on May 5th, 2002!  (We just had our second child, Aesara, Sept. 16, 2003.  Her picture is to the right.)

It was a wonderful religion-free ceremony that was held on the beach encircled by friends and family.  It was both breathtakingly beautiful and refreshingly different!  Our vows, while not written by us, were assembled in a fashion that we thought worked best for what we wanted to express.  You can find a copy here.

You may now be wondering where I got my son's name.  If any of you reading this don't know, Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who lived from 341 to 270 B.C.E.  Many of his sayings have been adopted by a great many Freethinkers for their accuracy in portraying some of the reasons we don't believe the popular superstitions.  Take this, for example,

Now wasn't that beautiful?  He captured the essence of the 'argument from evil' so poetically that it just flows off the tongue and many people, who formerly could not comprehend its validity, are now enlightened!

The argument from evil is a beautiful thing.  I have never encountered an apologist who could explain it away.  They, as always, just dance around the issue and try to get you with either fear or guilt with the classic xian used car salesman maneuvers. 

Not one could satisfactorily answer why, if their god loves us so much, why did he create Satan in the first place?  I mean, being omniscient he would have had to have known, into infinity, exactly what his creations would do and exactly how his creations would do it!  He would also, conversely, know every action that he would make to 'counteract' him, into infinity -- which oddly enough would mean that the xian god, if he existed would be a puppet of his own making!

And why, if the Christian god exists and loves us so much did he create so much disease?  I would imagine if a being was loving he would not create horrible and tortuous diseases for us to be infected by!  Isn't that just common sense? And yet the average xian blissfully and ignorantly passes right over this fact!

Another argument that constantly reinforces my Atheism is the "argument from nature."  It states that if there exists a loving god then nature should mirror this love in every detail.  Now take a look at nature.  Sure, there is love to be found.  But the majority of nature is pure brutality.  It really is war every day.  It is a dramatic struggle to survive.  It's either kill or be killed.  Eat or be eaten.  Darwin himself noted this cruelty found in nature and came to a similar conclusion when he said,

.."I cannot see so plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us.  There seems to me to me too much misery in the world.  I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with a mouse."

His example is just two of millions of an infinite number of horrible deaths to be found in nature.  Just watching the Discovery Channel will show you a Zebra getting its face ripped off by one lion while another tears a chunk of flesh from its back.  Or a mouse being squeezed so hard by a snake's constriction that its eyes explode!  Not the best way to go.  Is this love?  Can an xian honestly find beneficence in all of this?  Of course not, but as usual, they find a way to weasel out of it without having to truly answer the question directly.

Another fact, when brought up, that gets them scrambling to provide an answer, is why, if their god is the 'one true', are there so many other religions saying the exact same thing?  How come there are thousands upon thousands of gods and goddesses to choose from to believe in by faith?  We, as Atheists, can easily see that it's simply the effect of anthropomorphization in action.  It's just us silly humans personifying the world around us into something simpler so we can comprehend it.  Too bad the religious cannot see this simple truth that's right in front of their noses.

No, instead of grasping this simple fact, they will either try to demonize you, demonize the origin of the concept or demonize science as a whole.  They will do everything in their power to attach a negative connotation to your theory.  Anything to keep this very powerful antidote from reaching the core of belief in their brainwashed minds.

But at least now it's only insults.  Rarely is an Atheist killed for his disbelief.  I know that what I went through was comparably mild when viewed in perspective to how Atheists have been treated in the past!  I mean, I never once was threatened with being burned at the stake!  I never once was threatened  with any of the medieval torture that was levied against unbelievers.  The most I've 'suffered' has been xians yelling at me and writing me nasty letters.

None of that really bothered me, though, for I also took comfort in the fact that I was not alone.  In fact, according to a recent survey, as many as 27 million "describe themselves as Atheists, Agnostics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists..." according to American Atheists. 27 million!  Wow!  I thought there were a lot of new Freethinkers in America, but that's pretty damn impressive!

..And the movement is just starting to gain momentum.  We are only at the beginning stages of organization.  But thanks to Pastor Bush and the steady advancing march of the Religious Reich, we have become more motivated than ever before!  Faced with the challenges he has thrown at us we have finally woken up and started doing something about all the prejudice and injustice aimed at unbelievers.  We must stand up and fight!  We must defend the basic human right of freedom of conscience!

So go, tell your family and friends that you don't believe the popular superstitions.  Write your congressman and tell him that you think that any faith-based initiatives are unconstitutional.  Get up!  Get out!  And change the world you live in!

                                                                                            ~Reverend AtheiStar