My first doubts

"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."   -Isaac Asimov

My first doubts as to the legitimacy of Christianity were tied to where salvation supposedly comes from. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9  I always accepted that, thought it made sense. It was all I had ever known. But one day it occurred to me (and to the best of my recollection I really did think of it on my own, though I now know it's been said many times) that it didn't seem quite fair. From what I'd been taught, someone could be a horrible mass murderer, be guilty of the most heinous of crimes, and yet if, just moments before they died, they genuinely repented and asked Christ into their heart, they would go to Heaven. Yet if someone devoted their whole life to helping others, forgoing any chance at a normal life with a spouse and children, was totally self-sacrificing, and yet did not ask Christ into their heart, they would spend an eternity  in Hell. I believe the specific examples I had in mind were Hitler and my little sister, since they were ones I could emotionally relate to. To quote David Mills, author of Atheist Universe, one of my all time favorite books on the subject, it is "a system that admittedly promises heavenly rewards for faith and proper religious beliefs, rather than for real-world ethical treatment of others." I just couldn't see how this was a moral basis for determining who would go to eternal bliss and who to eternal torture. It certainly didn't seem to be the sort of rationale one would expect from a just deity.

I've been told this has to do with the fact that God is perfect, and our sin creates a chasm between us and him that we can never cross on our own. That Jesus's death on the cross was the only way for us to be purified, if we choose to accept it. I'll go into the subject in more detail at a later time, but it seems to me that IF God is omnipotent, as we've been given to believe, there's no such thing as the "only way" anything can be done. If he is all powerful, then the way things supposedly are is the way he chose for them to be. And again, I don't see how this is just.

I've still yet to hear an explanation that seems even remotely morally acceptable to me.This certainly wasn't the only argument that led me to embrace atheism, nor even the most compelling, but it still seems a serious endictment of Christianity, and any other religion that embraces words over deeds.

Allow me to introduce myself...

...I'm RosieLass, and I'm one of the many, many people who have decided to take it upon themselves to write an atheist blog. I probably don't have anything to say that hasn't been said a thousand times, but I do feel this is one subject that can't be written about enough, so I'll give it a whirl.

I'm a 25-year-old, happily married woman from Tennessee. As you might guess from the birthplace, I was raised Southern Baptist. I spent my entire childhood in church every Sunday, and to be frank never even realized that it was optional. I never put much thought into it, but I think I assumed there weren't really many atheists out there, and those that existed were unhappy, immoral people who would eventually find their way to God. I'm not sure how this tallied with the constant messages to go on mission trips and proselytize to everyone we met, but like I said, I didn't put much thought into it.

When I got to high school, I soon realized that the ultra-conservative lifestyle I saw in my parents was far from the norm. I spent those years wavering between being super Christian, and still believing in God but not caring much. I still didn't know how I could possibly not believe in God. I was so thoroughly indoctrinated that I genuinely believed that science showed evolution was impossible, and I didn't like the idea of no afterlife at all.

I don't want this to turn into a novel, so I'll sum up the next few years quickly. I slowly realized the logical fallacies of Christianity. Still afraid not to believe in something, I turned to paganism, but soon realized it made even less sense. Finally I faced my fears and read Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion. And to be perfectly honest, it was the biggest relief I've ever felt. I no longer had to force myself to believe something that I knew, deep down, just wasn't true.

Every Christian always asks me, and no, I'm not "angry at God," nothing happened to "turn me against God" or church or religion. I have simply studied the facts, from both sides, and decided which one made sense to me. Those facts are what I plan to discuss here, as well as pertinent news stories and even personal anecdotes. I hope people enjoy reading it. At the very least, I know I'll enjoy writing it.