A word about my Atheistic Tendencies

I haven't blogged on Critical Mass in a while and that's sad to be sure. My life feels very non-spiritual when I'm going through pregnancy and have a young child, not sure why that is. I was totally unable to read any spiritual books while pregnant. I could not connect with any of the ideas.

I've only just started to pick up things again. However even though I have not done a lot of reading, I have still been able to do a lot of thinking over the last year. If anything I have become more sympathetic to Atheism for the logic involved in it. I feel very proud to be married to an Atheist and a thinker. His rationalizations for why he thinks God does not exist I think are sound and I can understand them. I don't totally agree but it make perfect sense to me. I think it makes more sense to be Atheist first and ask questions than it does to be religious primarily and not question.

I think living with Dan has made me more of an Atheist, and the constant questioning that I pose to him has made him more of an Agnostic, that maybe there's a squeak of a chance that life is not as it seems in black and white. It's a fun balance that we share and we've had lots of good discussions about it. It would take many paragraphs to really explain that and I'm not sure I have time for it right now. The main question that I've posed to Dan however is that isn't it just as wrong to say that you know for sure that god exists as to say that you know that you're sure that he doesn't. To me it's the same error when neither side can hold up the evidence and say here it is. It makes much more sense to be Agnostic.

To sum it up as simply as I can, I'm a totally religious-Atheist. I do not accept any religions as correct and I'm more certain of that than ever. Give me a religion that says simply, "Be a good person, you don't need to do anything else, you will know if you've achieved that by the way others respond to you", and I will subscribe to that.

I do hold open hope that there are spirits on the other side, angels, gods, etc however until I have a personal experience with one, I am not going to go out of my way to worship any. I have mentally asked that if there are those out there that they appear to me and set me straight. So far nothing has happened, however I remain vigilant for such an occurrence. Many people I have read about have had visitations, so if all those people can have visitations and someone who would like to believe asks for one, then certainly that should not be too much trouble. What else have they to do anyway, it's not like they have bodies.

I do believe in miracles and wondrous things that happen. These types of things have happened to me at strange times. People show up in my life just when I really need the most help and I feel that there is something spiritual about them, as if they are angels walking, but maybe they are just good people, very good people.

That is a main tenant of my belief, I do believe. That while you're here on Earth it isn't God that takes care of things, it's other people that help. It's people that show up in the flesh, and people are what matter while we are here. If you pray for help, it's people that show up to help, with their bare hands and good hearts. So far, God hasn't show up personally but if he ever should I stand ready to humbly apologize and follow any directions that he may have. Assuming that I think he seems like a good "person" to follow. Maybe there are many "gods" and some aren't that great, who knows. I will need some references and I'm going to ask a lot of questions regardless.

ACIM clarifications

I have been back to reading ACIM since I've downloaded it on my Kindle. It's a different format (electronic) and somehow it makes reading the Course seem different. I feel like I'm rediscovering it. One thing I've always liked about the Course is it tries to set straight what is correct in the Bible and what is not. If you believe ACIM, it is actually Jesus getting to say what he really wanted to say word for word and not through a bunch of filters over the years.

I've long wanted to collect passages where ACIM corrects or clarifies what the bible states. Now with the help of the kindle I can bookmark passages and retrieve them easier.

Here is one such passage :

"The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell him how wonderful he is. He has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception with which to judge it. "

This is a very interesting statement that I feel would nullify most of mainstream religion if it got out. God has no ego, so he does not understand praise and no perception or judgement against anyone or anything. That is quite opposite what most people are taught. The Bible seems very judgemental with lots of "you should do this and thats". If it is true that God is really a benevolent god, then I think it's further proof that the bible has been irreparably ravaged by human egos and most of it is of very little value.

I will try to collect more of these instances in the ACIM as I find them very enlightening and once you begin to see the whole puzzle put together, there is an entirely different picture waiting than the one that mainstream religion paints.