I stepped on shit. But why did I?

Well to answer the question simply…  Because I wasn’t looking at where I was walking. To be more precise I wasn’t looking to where I was stepping at that given time, the time therefore when I stepped on shit. To be even more precise. But why wasn’t I looking at the time? Because I was doing other things at the time. What other things? Well I was sending a txt message to my friend. Why were you sending a txt message to your friend? Because I wanted to explain to him that I wasn’t going to go out with him tonight. Why couldn’t you go out with him tonight? Because I had to study my immunology. Let’s stop the questions here because it is infinite. I want to show you that by following this trail of thought and you get bored by asking questions to about this point you can come into the following conclusion: I stepped on shit because I had to study immunology in a future time. 

I gave that rediculous example because I wanted to show to people that as humans beings we have the pathological need to explain things. We always ask ourselves why did that happen, why is this thing like this and not like that? Why? There is a good reason on why we are doing this (Yes I know it’s sad that I have to explain why we feel the need to explain things). We are all doing this because it keeps as safe. The cause and effect of anything, if we manage to decode it down to form rules in our brains give as an advantage over people that don’t have those rules in their head. In more simple terms. It has been evolutionary conserved for the majority of human beings to ask themselves the question why. To ponder about things and find answers that they consider satisfying in order to put rules and laws that life follows. Life in this example includes the physical world. These rules may sometimes exist the physical world and extend to the paranormal world ie imaginary principles with no base in natural values that extend into having effect on the physical world. What this means is that when the human mind cannot discover rules, it creates rules that have no base or may have some base in reason and common sense, so that it can explain by the mere imaginative creation or by mere coincidence certain physical phenomena. 

There are countless examples of this phenomenon. Zeus the god of thunder, rain dances, virgin sacrifices to stop the volcano from exploiting, touching wood for bad things not to occur. We all have a thing/habit that we do that has no basis in common sense that we simply do in order to avoid or have a physical phenomenon occur in a predictable/likeable manner. Our own personal OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder).  You see for our brain something doesn’t always have to make sense in order for it to be associated. It’s a fale safe mechanism. It’s better to be safe therefore than sorry. It’s not logical, it’s based in the fear of the unknown/death as is everything if you take it down to the deepest level. 

What I want to do though is not explain why we are doing this, but to explain a different concept. One concept that most people fail to see in science. Just because as human beings we want to see reason in everything, it doesn’t mean there is always a reason for things that happen. Just because there is always a goal in our interactions with people and all our actions are governed by our futuristic aims, it doesn’t mean that nature, the universe or even the events happening all around us work like that. I heard from a guy at the university that when he looks at a problem from a physiological prospective, ie when he is looking for the function of anything in the body he is looking at it from the point of view, of why would god place it there. What reason did he have to put it there. What function would it serve in order for it to be there. You see what people and most people fail to see is that most things happen by accident. MOST things happen by accident. Only goal seeking animals make things happen. You need to realise that there is no goal set for our genes. Things happen because they do. Our eyes did not develop for us to see. Our eyes simply developed because it was beneficial for the body to have it.

What do I mean by that… Let’s imagine that I am god for example, I am not skipping evolution I am just doing it hell fast. Back to the example, I am god. I see animals that eat each other up with no eyes. Suddenly I throw 1 pair of eyes on one guy. I let the guy PROSPER and have childer and let his childer inherit the eyes until all of his species now has eyes and feeds on the other species. I feel sorry for the other species and I do the same for them. Now both of the species has eyes and the weakest species starts to develop tactics to avoid dying. For the hell of it let’s just say that it happens to be faster then it will run once it spots the other species. So the fastest of the hunter species will survive giving rise to faster children and the faster of the hunted species survives to give rise to even faster children. Yes it looks like a race. It looks like they are purposely creating faster animals.

Look again that’s not what’s happening. By accident something suddenly had a function. Let’s say I have a limited number of resources to spend and I do so by just blindly buying stuff and I get thrown into an island with those stuff, if by accidently taking a gun with me I’d survive, if I didn’t I won’t. If this is happening for billions of years this means that life suddenly appears as if it has a cause as you don’t experience the effect of failures of lost dead descendants. You only experience the successes.. This means that it appears as things have a cause. It appears as limbs have a role a function and a reason for being there. No. LIMBS came by accident and they evolved into having a function and a reason for existence when you look at it from the human prospective. Everything came to be by accident and everything obeyed the laws of natural selection which is just a biological law for a larger scale organic reaction. 

It doesn’t just stop there. We shouldn’t let as human beings our pathological need to try and give a reason into everything that’s happening. This is bad for our understanding and it’s really bad for science I think. What we should do and I think this is what modern science is doing. Is take what we have and explore what is happening and not try to explain or give a reason on why it’s happening rather than simply accept it as a fact. Just like physicists who create laws of the universe, they don’t try to give a reason on why the universe is as it is. They simply try to find the rules of it. Ie find the equations that fit however illogical with our understanding of the modern medium sized world. What you want to do is just find what it is that fits and works. Divise theories that explain the physical phenomena with no greater purpose or plan for them.

 

Laters.

Assisted suicide, is it wrong?

Before I start I’d like to say that I am studying medicine and that I have an exam tomorrow but when I stambled on this http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bPS3pZGthw0 on youtube I couldn’t help it I had to produce something and put in my blog. 

Note: I am not going to give an unbiased view, I am sorry. I don’t have time and I don’t want to put an unbiased view on this. I will put my own opinion on the matter.

I believe that humans are creatures of free will. Certain individuals have a stronger sense of that free will. But in essence all people are free to do as they please as long as their freedom of will doesn’t harm the freedom of others. We all have free will but, in a democratic government we are free to express that will and we all do so every day by expressing our opinion, wearing t-shirts with logos, posting on websites, writing our own blog etc etc. There is also another concept that we all have. Our body belongs to us and we all have autonomy over our body. Autonomy which allows us to refuse medical treatment in the UK if we don’t want to get treated. As I said before, I am doing medicine and the central idea of medicine is to never do harm, and in biological terms the Doctors there are causing harm by assisting the patient to die. 

In the UK euthanasia is illegal. But it is legal for other animals if they are suffering with an incurable disease that is going to cause them pain and suffering. Euthanasia in that respect is considered the humane thing to do. And in all honesty it is the humane thing to do. You are letting your animal die pain free without even realising it is dying which for many people (most people wish that they would die in their sleep so that they would feel no fear about it) is the best way to go. In all respects though, euthanasia of a dog is worse ethically than euthanasia of a human being. The dog cannot grasp the idea of death, and it cannot understand the pain is going to get through and in a paternalistic way, we humans make the decision for it. Maybe if the dog had a voice and could comprehend thoughts such as these, it would choose otherwise, but since it’s an animal we consider it better (I know many people don’t, but I do) to make the decision for the dog and help it die. For a human being that decision comes after complex thinking. That decision for the person deciding to die is a long process full of fear, full of anger, full of of feelings of injustice but from what I get as the centre there assesses their psychological state never a feeling of depression so that they are consciously making the decision for themselves. So for a human being it is actually suicide just pain free. And the assisted part is in actually providing the barbiturate which depresses breathing and senses so you are basically dying a very pleasant death, in which by comparison to the death he was going to experience it would have been terrible.

But it’s not just down to that. If you knew you were going to die and you had a time frame for your death, wouldn’t you want your death to be in your own terms? In a setting that you choose, with people that you love and die without experiensing all the horror that is laid in-front of you? 

I will repeat it. In medicine we are told to never do harm. But we are told to respect a patients autonomy. We as human beings know that we need to respect each other’s freedom. We know that we have to respect the opinion of others, even though we don’t always do. But I don’t think that in this case medicine in doing harm. Medicine is helping someone have a pleasant and comfortable death. I know that doctors have a legal obligation to extend someone’s life as long as they can, but it’s their decision. If they could they would do it themselves. I feel that the doctors in that place are doing what every doctors should be allowed to do, when asked. It’s the right thing and it really is helping your patient. And since it’s their decision I feel that there is nothing wrong with it.

Also I feel that there is NO place for Religion on this matter. Medicine is based on science and there is no room for religion. Religion is solely allowed to play a role in the patients mind and if a doctor feels uncomfortable with it they should actually refer people to someone else. In this case it’s not a case where you need to report it. The decision is conscious, the patient knows what he wants and he knows what he is doing. And quite frankly just like a religious person, Craig Ewert even though an atheist, died holding just like any religous person his beliefs strongly in his death bed.

 

-Andreas

That’s why you can’t ignore the evidence

Why can’t a person claim that the evidence point towards such existence? Why is it selfish to presume that there is a god? Why can’t you claim that the earth is 6000 years old? Why can’t you trust the teachings of the church? Why does science offer answers that are justified upon reasoning that can’t be clouded by a mere book?

A person can never claim that he has such evidence because there is no evidence to support such thing. Evidence that they may present are miraculous healings in which there is always a perfect reasonable explanation to back it up or some holy books that were written by god almighty or something in that sort. A person cannot claim that these things are evidence because they can always be explained by something else. Also a person talking to god is not evidence for the existence of god, it’s evidence pointing towards a hoax or towards a person suffering from psychosis. Other such evidence include the assumption that since there are no evidence to back up the non existence of god, therefore there is a god. So in this logic, if I don’t know if there is meat in my fridge, I assume that there is meat.

It’s selfish to presume there is a god because we point towards the existence of such god which bases around earth. Earth might be our home and to us appears gigantic but towards other places and with the vastness of the universe, it’s just extreme to think that the whole universe and the creator of such universe made all this for us. The Milky way galaxy, our galaxy, doesn’t revolve around us, and yet all we see is us in the picture of the vastness of something so huge we probably do not have the ability to imagine it. It’s like the ants believing in god and that they are the destined ones, or our cells believing in such thing. Don’t you feel so small when you imagine, what you really are, a person among billions, who lives on a tiny planet lost among the vastness of this universe that we know nothing about? I feel small but yet still I embrace this and have made my peace with it, as no matter how small I am, I have the opportunity to try and learn as much as I can about this universe and do not cloud my judgment because of a belief to a supernatural being.

The earth is not 6000 years old. Any scientist who believes this is not a scientist. He does not understand how the tests are made and how the results are obtained. He is just a sad person trying as hard as he can in order to obtain evidence that point towards the existence of the Christian god. You see for such people science contradicts their beliefs and instead of doing the right thing and accepting the evidence, they just close their eyes and their ears and listen to the word of god… whatever that may be.

The very fact that science or the theories in which the dating of bones or fossils is used in other domains of science, not just geology should be enough to prove to people that they are wrong to believe that the earth is 6000 years old. What I mean by this is, that MRI scanning or theory of decaying and half life of radioactive isotopes is used in medicine as well. There people trust their lives on theories that they are actually rejected by them afterwards. I think that no sane person would actually see any connection between the bible and the age of the earth at least.

Why can’t the Bible overwrite what is proven by scientific research? Simple. Empirical evidence is always better than the word of the pope or priests. If you seriously think that that is the word of god and being as such cannot be disproven even if there are evidence against it. So therefore any discussion towards that issue would be unnecessary as you would never change your mind. As such you would agree in views that greatly support your world view or are more psychologically appealing. Well that’s not how nature works, that’s not how the universe is. If people had the same mindset as fundamentalist Christians we would be stuck in an age where the earth would still be flat. Where most people would starve, where all free thinkers would be prosecuted, where people would be dying from black death or any other disease. You see everyone enjoys the good life, but when it comes to it no-one gives credit to the people that actually created that good life for them. And those people are scientists who were prosecuted at the beginning and were putting their life in danger in favour of this free thinking.

I think that it is time for all people to open their eyes and see the world just like it is. To not accept everything that’s they’ve been told. It’s time for people to understand that not everything that makes us emotionally happier is what is the truth. It’s time to understand that in this world religion has no place. In this world free thinking and reasoning should prevail.

Is atheism for everyone?

Is atheism for everyone? (Question asked by a friend)

I will try to tackle this question in the best way that I can and in the best way I think that is possible to answer such question. This question came to us by me telling them that my father and mother are not people who are ready to give up to religion. This question came by understanding that some people may not be very likely ready to accept such views or understand them just because of the intensity and the problems that they faced in their lives. This question came to me due to the belief of different people’s tolerance levels of life.

I will answer the question above in a simple 2 lettered word. No and I will try to explain my views why this is so.

I will start to explain this by avoiding arguments put forward by Sam Harris, by Richard Dawkins and by Christopher Hitchens. I do not think that intelligence has anything to do with the fact that some people can be atheists and some people can’t. I want to argue that most people can just accept that fact and other people just can’t. It might even be genetics who knows, but the fact that we find in studies that a very high percentage of the science literate population is atheist is mainly because of the fact that those people were exposed to arguments against God and have finally reached the conclusion that a supernatural being is improbable and most likely doesn’t exist and have thus called themselves atheists, just like I did.

The main problem to arguments put up like that is that we ignore the fact that many great people that are extremely intelligent and can probably do better than you in essays, in exams and can understand science better than you can are actually theists and belong to specific religions. That is a hole in the whole argument because such people are people with very high IQ levels and are genuinely very intelligent to be able to understand and explain many of the scientific theories that we have now. I would like to note here that I do not think that anything with science is hard if you just put your mind into it and have a passion for it so I am also not a great fun of the argument that science is only for intelligent people. So moving on from that I do not believe that science literacy would never change the mind of these people. People who are genuinely smart and who are science literate and still have some room in their lives for god. By the way I just want to mention that this last sentence doesn’t make their continuation of belief a positive thing.

In my view you either can or you can’t be an atheist. You either can understand life without god or you can’t. God lays somewhere deep inside our mind, somewhere deep in our understanding of our existence and our reason to be. Some people claim that the only reason they have for living on their lives is god. Otherwise this cruel and blood covered world makes no sense at all. Their life who is evidently going to end makes no sense and has no meaning. For some people is different than other people but I think there are only two reasons why people need god in their lives. The first one is that some people generally feel as if the world needs a maker, needs something better than this because they look around the world and they know that this is not good. Some people need an explanation because their brain cannot comprehend all these atrocities and deaths as normal. You see some people are genuinely sensitive and want to have a hope that something better may exist. Something pure and loving, something that can infinitely make them happy and they find that in god. Even though these people are wrong and basically ignore that is just human nature, the fact that we can never be happy that is one of their arguments. The second reason why some people might feel that way is fear of the end. Fear of death. I think that some people just fear death so much that basically look for life and need life to continue no matter what the cost. The same with before people experienced so much hatred they just need their life to continue in a better place. They don’t want everything to be for nothing, they can’t accept everything to be for nothing. I can’t see why they can’t just accept that, I know that it was hard for me at first but I guess some people just can’t grow into it.

I call these reasons life tolerance levels, which differ for many people. I think some people just can’t live with the idea that god doesn’t exist and even if evidence were there to show that he really doesn’t exist, not that will ever be an experiment that will actually prove something that doesn’t exist, but I guess there are tones of experiments that can’t prove something that should have existed, they would still be people with faith. People just can’t accept it. If there is no god then what makes sense? Exactly this is the question that is troubling their minds. This is the question. They need sense they need reason. I guess their tolerance levels for life are just different maybe lower. I do not want to make this as a weakness or make it appear as a sensitivity. This is just how people are, and if people need god to get them get through the day then I guess they can just have god.

Some people believe that a god exists because the beginning of the universe needs a spark or a tiny bit of extra energy to start everything and that that energy needed to come from something or someone. That belief is not hard to change, it’s not hard to go a step ahead and understand even that can be an even that we quite do not know and do not understand and that a supernatural being is not needed to explain it. But for someone who needs god to make them get through the day they would use god to make them do just that. For other people the equation concludes the improbability of such being and as such the decision comes easy, for other like me the decision for the lack of the supernatural was even harder but for other people such decision is impossible and just can’t happen.

So yes atheism is not for everyone and I guess it will take many years for it to be able to be compatible with everyone and I guess there is nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn’t stop human advancement and scientific progress.

From Christianity to Atheism

Journey of an Orthodox Christian to atheism

This story is my story and is a story and is a story of how a person grown in religion and then grew out of it. This is a journey from how a small kid that would go to church every Sunday, that would pray to God before going to bed and believe strongly in God turned into an atheist. This journey happened in Cyprus where Greek Orthodox Christians exist and where the alternative religion is Islam which is portrayed as an invading force in the beliefs of young people and adults. This journey will show how a believer can have doubts and how every believer that claims that he has no doubts because he believes is wrong. I am writing this and take time off my daily routine because I think that people need to open their eyes. I am writing this because I believe that other people live or lived the same things that I did but went towards the other direction, I am writing this so that if anyone happens to read this, he or she would hopefully think about twice because closing his or her eyes to information and truth and go for the wrongly path of religion.

I was born in 21^st of May 1987 in Nicosia Cyprus. Born into a family of a paradox mix for my country. Especially back then. My dad was right wing and my mum was left wing and back then considering the divisions that existed and the blaming that was going on between the left and the right wing parties on who was responsible for the Turkish invasion of half of the island, it was not likely that something like that would occur. But people forget, people live on with other people’s mistakes and forgive. They wrongly forget but they rightly forgive.

My dad is a refugee from the Northern part of Cyprus, if you people are fans of Mr. Hitchens you would probably have read a book where he explains the story of Cyprus as his ex-wife if I recall correctly is Cypriot. My mum is not a refugee but she also lived the horror of war as one of her cousins went missing in the war and is now most probably believed to be dead. So as you can see as a child I grew up in an environment which didn’t encourage multicultural teachings. When I say multicultural I am specifically talking about coexisting with Turks, as they were the enemy and they still are to all the Greek Cypriots. So I would not be able to recognize the difference between a Turkish child and a Turkish soldier. We used to say a Turk is good only dead and stuff like that. You see patriotism goes together where morals are down and where a country desperately looks for a reason to hold on and fight back.

My dad is a Christian Orthodox and so is my mum. So I was taught in a very young age that the God is one and that his son was sent down to earth to suffer and die and liberate us from our sins. You see as a child I was amazed by all this nonsense because as you very well know to young children Jesus looks like a hero. Something close to Power Rangers or Dragonball heroes like Goku, I am trying to relate to my past so forgive me if I am talking about cartoon shows that existed long ago. But the difference between Jesus and Goku was that Jesus was true and although Goku did look much more amusing and far more interesting Goku was a cartoon, Jesus was real and he was god.

I had such a great fate in what my mum and dad told to me. Do not consider me one of those normal children that walk around and run around doing exactly what their mum told them to. From a very young age I was doing whatever was the most interesting. From a very young age I started to doubt things and from a very young age I started sharing my opinions with my father, my mother, my grandpa and my grandma. You see that’s why I still find it much more entertaining and challenging to engage a conversation with older people which can share with me the wisdom of their lives. But nonetheless I never doubted God.

It’s like I was sure that God is right. After all he was bringing comfort to me. It is important to state here that even though my dad is a very strong believer, he never enforced anything to me. He never told me you should pray, he never made me go to church well of course besides Christmas and in my name day and if you want to include you can include my baptism. But over all I was living in a very liberal sort of environment where reason was encouraged. That is partly to do with Christian Orthodox teachings. We were never told to not learn sciences, we were never encouraged to just look for God inside Christian Orthodox Church. We were rather told that we should look into sciencee and that we shall find God there and that god would be the same god of Christian Orthodox teachings. It does sound a bit arrogant of the faith, but at least we were encouraged to look and learn and find out about science and about the wonders of this world. So my dad also allowed that, he also believed that learning is vital for the later on survival, ie he would tell me that I should learn how to write and how to calculate and be very good in the career path that I choose. So did my mum who was always dreaming of me becoming a doctor (as she says only when she saw my true interest in science) and let’s hope I’ll manage to prove her right because it is a very challenging course.

And so I started school and at first grade I was taught to read and write and taught important mathematics and I was also taught about the story of Jesus and about the story of Moses. You see it was a very easy way to make people learn and become literate if you interested them in a nice story but also a very nice way to encourage children to become Christian orthodox. We were told that if we did go to church, 7 times we would be given a cross to wear and we would be given icons of saints. You see I was always very competitive and always wanted to win even at the most stupid thing possible and ended up competing even for that. I would wake up faster than everyone on a Sunday morning and go to the church. I would be so early that sometimes I would actually have to wait for the priest. The priest went later on to develop into a family friend all because of me, and my dad went on to develop into a very serious Christian again all because of me, but I’ll come to that later. So for all the first three grades I was always going to church. I was always there first and early and would help with the Christian practices inside next to the priest. I knew what was going on inside out and I was always praised for my strong beliefs. It wasn’t only church and the service that attracted me. Because as you know the service in Greek Christian Orthodox churches is given in ancient Greek and that’s very different from the Modern Greek we speak so it would take time and effort for anyone to understand, so imagine how it was like for a 6 year old. Nonetheless I had memorised much of the service and sometimes when I happen to listen to the radio or the tv of a Christian service I remember much of it and I can recall many extracts of it. Makes you love the brilliance of the human mind.

I was so excited by the mysteries that were carried in the service and so I wanted to become a priest for a short amount of time. My dad loved it, my mum didn’t. But nonetheless they were having fun with their faithful Christian son. I always wanted to help people and I guess I considered being a priest a very huge help towards humanity and towards the public. I used to think of priests as the healers of souls. This is largely fre to the very friendly character of the priest where I lived who would explain to me everything, who would come to our place and visit, who would help the children, who would encourage people to be good Christians which in his sense and in the way he explained it was just equal to people being good persons and good civilians. I still hold very large respect for him and he still visits and calls me sometimes and wishes me Happy Nameday and tell me to walk in the path of Christ. And so this love for Christianity grew and I would pray for my soul and for other people every night before going to bed.

Most Christians say that it is prayer that actually makes them feel close to god but for me it was the first step to doubt god. For me it was like talking to a wall. Well that’s most probably because I was talking to a wall. And because it didn’t have an effect. Plus being very well aware of what I was wishing for, I felt very selfish and bad because many times you would wish for things to happen over other people’s good. That began to trouble me, but it didn’t trouble me enough to actually lose faith altogether.

I forgot to mention that after some months I decided that I wanted to become a doctor because I could effectively see the good of my actions, instantly and that I could directly help people. Plus to tell you the truth I was very excited about cutting people open. You see my mum bought me theseks which were books for 12 year olds or something which portrayed the pictures of how the human body looks inside and I was astonished and excited. My mum knew that I wasn’t scared of these things and so directly helped me to have a great love for science now.

So after 6^th grade I moved into a private school that I passed the entrance exams. It’s a school where my free thinking was encouraged and where I was slowly and steadily began to drift away from god. I do not think that that school gave me just knowledge, I believe that that school gave me the ability to think for myself and the ability to challenge opinions that were never challenged. You see the more I learned about God the more I changed the picture of god. I was a deist at most by 3^rd form at private school, I was a deist but pictured the god that started the universe as the god of the bible. I would sit down and think and know that a god that loves everyone may exist, but a god that interferes with our lives doesn’t exist, a god that created us doesn’t exist, a god that created the earth doesn’t exist and the very idea that humans were created in his own image were stupid to say the least.

It was in 4^th form that I began to experiment with the idea of death. It was then that I finally realized that there is no after life, that this is just it or it was somewhere around und there. You see as a teenager and as a young man that I am now the idea and the concept of death frightens me. It’s an idea that I hate and despise and do not want to picture. Unluckily for me that idea never came out of my head and it was troubling me for so long, the same as the concept of god that I recently reached into that conclusion. I was thinking that maybe there is something that I can do in order to actually picture how death is like. Do not think that I tried something special, I did have near death experiences but I didn’t see anything and I couldn’t remember anything, so I tried to visualize death.

One night I just laid in my bed and I closed my eyes and started imagining that I was dead. I started thinking of how it is to be dead. I started to imagine that this is gone, that all my friends all my family is gone, I tried to imagine the lack of self, I tried to fell alone and empty. You might think I am not being serious with this, but this is exactly what I did. I did exactly this and I imagined that all this is over and all this is gone. And I finally managed to achieve that and then I tried to think of what is like. But then you get the ideas of nothing existing, no tomorrow, no love, no friends, no family, no self, nothing, pitch black nothing. Your conscience can’t take it, your body can’t take it. I have to tell that that experience was the most real experience I ever had, the scariest compared to everything that I lived. My hC rt rate rose, I started breathing really heavily, I think I managed to put myself in an anxiety state and that I induced on myself a panic attack. After that day I was sure that this planet is where I want to live and that this life is good enough, with everything that’s wrong about it, I still want to live it. I told my friends about my experience and talked many of them into trying it and many swore against me the next day, and many people told me that they don’t want to live that ever again. I specifically remember one girl telling me that I was a very mean person for doing that. I think that it’s one of the best things to try, if you believe and even if you don’t try it. Try imagining death, try to picture death, try to imagine no tomorrow and no conscience and you will see.

I did think that I saw how it is to be dead back then, and that my body couldn’t take the idea. Even if I couldn’t understand what it’s like to be dead, it certainly taught me a very important thing about death. It taught me that, it is the scariest experience and the scariest idea that a person ( a reasonable person can have ), it was so clear to me that most men couldn’t live with the idea of an end. Our brain is not evolved to accept death, our brain is not evolved to think of non existence, of no tomorrow, our brain is not evolved to give up, it is after all evolved to carry us through life. It was back then that I saw with clear colours that the existence of god is necessary. It was back then that I saw that god was the faith, the reason for people that had the same worries and the same questions as me, thousands of years ago to wake up and try to live another day. It was exactly after that, that I realized that people actually needed something, needed something to keep them going on. You see intelligence doesn’t always come with good things, most of the times it comes with a price, the price of knowing that your day will come no matter what. The price of knowing that death will end this earthly existence and put you back into nothing. That is why I always picture death with time before birth. Before birth I was nothing and after death nothing I will be again. You just can’t accept that in your sub-conscience. And instead of that you create nothing. And instead of that you accept the blatant lies that give you hope. It’s rightly that it was said “What is a man without hope”? I guess a man with no hope is a depressed man, it’s an immoral man, it’s a man who has lost in this game that’s called life.

Even though I did reach to all these conclusions I was still a deist. I was still thinking that someone should have started all this. Someone should have caused the big bang, someone should be there to enjoy this outcome. I could still not let go, I could still not accept that nothing exists at all. I could accept that there is no after life, but I couldn’t accept that a supernatural being doesn’t exist. Most people would ask me what’s the point. If you take after life out of the picture there is nothing there for most people. Well yes, there is nothing there, but for me after years and years, god and existence in general became a philosophical question. It became a question that bugged me. And if a question bugs you, you think about it until you reach a conclusion, until you find the answer that you were so desperately looking for.

It is important to note that, in 6^th form, when I was 18, I walked out of a school morning assembly because a religious group was brought to talked to us about religious stuff and I just walked out because I thought that religious teachings and people trying to bring me into their faith sphere was immoral. I was almost expelled but after some talking and some higher parties taking action the whole matter was settled. But was funny about this was that I was thought to have walked out because of supporting my Christian Orthodox views. I did no such thing, I walked out because I was supporting my views. I thought that it’s bad enough that religion is taking over people’s life, I didn’t want religion to take over education. I didn’t want religion to play a role or have any part in school assemblies. I didn’t want religious groups to try and increase their numbers out of naïve and young students.

I did explain my doubts about god to some close friends of mine. Also I did tell them that I thought religion was bad, even though I still thought back then that Christian Orthodox religion would be a good moral ground for child upbringing. You’ll be pleased to know that I have changed my mind about that.

I left school in 2006 and have ever since researched the matter even more. I am not an old atheist. I have been fighting this battle for a long time to reach this conclusion. You see I never wanted to accept it. Being romantic I guess and into literature and a person that enjoys poetry and even write some attempts of poetry myself, I guess it was harder for me to accept it. I guess it was harder for me to see the world simpler than what my feelings could indicate it to be. I am thought to be among the believers I guess among atheists, because I can explain feelings and I do enjoy the idea of love and compassion and do not always enjoy explaining everything in simple science terms, even though sometimes people need to hear the truth to wake up. I reached the conclusion that there is nothing somewhere back in 2006 and in my own words I knew that there was nothing up in the skies. I understood that for years I was just merely keeping an idea of god to explain the universe and then I suddenly understood that I was not looking at the whole picture. That I was just being selfish and self centred. I understood that the universe was much more vast than I could imagine, I understood that I am nothing compared to the universe and that my existence required no supernatural being to explain it. I understood that like every other concept and idea god was manmade. I could see that the universe would only be explained by science and not by some supernatural existence. I could see that everything we knew was even more mysterious and much more complicated than we already understood. I finally realized that I did not believe in something different, I understood that I was merely giving god as a name to the explanation of how the universe came to existence.

I was not shocked by my atheism, it wasn’t a very important day for me. It was a day just like every other and like every other day, I decided about something, it was just that this day I decided that I was an atheist after all and that there is no god.

After that I read Prof. Dawkins’ books and Mr. Hitchens’ and everything came into place. You see I had no-one to talk about this. I had no-one to share these thoughts. This whole journey was a journey with myself until I finally realized what I really believed into. The God delusion finally made things fall into place, and finally helped me understand that I am not alone. I understood that an increasing number of people questioned religious teachings and turned into atheism or agnosticism. I understood that for most reasonable human beings religious teachings should just be viewed as nothing to base any faith on and that different religions were used as just tools to take over the world or control the masses. You see the funny thing about this, is that unless you do some reading and try to research some things and listen to people that presumably know more than you, you cannot connect the dots. I would never accuse religion for religious people’s evil actions. I would never accuse religion for the evil actions of its leaders. But I was missing out on one very important point. You see in Greek church is “εκκλησία” which in ancient greek was people gathered together in a place. You see religion is nothing else but its people and without its isople religion is nothing. I could not just not accuse a religion for the bad things that are happening due to the very strict obedience of its teachings.

So this day I am an atheist, who considers religion as evil. I am an atheist who considers that there doesn’t need to be a reason for something to happen and that a reason shouldn’t exist to explain why things happen the way they happen. All there needs to be is, understanding of why things happen and that understanding comes with empirical evidence from science. Also I would like to point out that by being an atheist I haven’t dropped my morals, I think I continue to be the same person and I do think that in my opinion the person I am is good.

Religion – The greatest threat in the modern world

Religion is the belief in a deity or if you prefer a supernatural being who created the world as it is or started the universe. A creator therefore of some sort that doesn’t obey to natural rules is the key concept of religion, where people come together and have a faith in a view of God which is specific.

Religion is the only thing I think about when I look at the future’s problems and the reason why these problems may be caused. Religion is the only thing I see blocking advancement. Religion is the only thing I see arming the hands of small kids with guns to kill infidels. Religion is the only reason I see why people would choose the supernatural views over the natural views.

Most people will think that this is not the case that religion is not dangerous. Religious people are most of the times quiet and nice people that gently live next to us. People like that could not possibly harm us in any way. I agree most people will not directly harm you. I am not going to go into the thinking of the fanatics nor compare religious people to the fanatics of their religion because I know that according to most religious people fanatics are simply people who do not understand the “meaning” of god. So I will just point out that most of the religious people hold beliefs that are outdated. What I mean by that is that they hold views that some times are as old as 2000 years old and sometimes even older than that. People base their morals on those views and their understanding of how the world works in opinions that are really wrong.

These views make people basically close their ears and eyes to the truth and progress. Progress in my book doesn’t just come with the increasing knowledge about the world which comes from science but it also comes from the lack of updating their morals. Morals are constantly updated and constantly changed towards the best I think. People are increasingly becoming more accepting to change and more accepting to people being different which includes homosexuality etc. I am not a homosexual so this doesn’t really affect me but many religions openly condemn homosexuality. Islam, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity are a few of the religions where homosexuality is considered abnormal to say the least and considered to be a very serious sin and is unacceptable. Some people do take this view very seriously and actually do not accept homosexuals, who are openly and widely accepted by society right now.

Religions make irrational things make sense. Irrational things such as the non consumption of pork meat, fasting, hiding any part of skin, getting crucified for Jesus, believing in resurrection, believing in after life are thought to be rational if you have your beliefs set on a religion. As humans we have common sense and we can actually understand that what we are actually doing or what we are actually believing is not reasonable, it’s not natural, it’s really not what we should have been doing. But faith comes to play a role. Blind faith is all you need. If you blindly believe everything starts to make sense. Every test that your body needs to undertake in order to feel “fulfillment”, any pleasure that is promoted by your physical needs should be controlled and limited if not stopped so that you should enjoy eternal life.

Religion wants the world to be illiterate. Religion wants the world to be poor. I know this doesn’t go along with the teachings of religion which basically teaches people to be nice to each other. But religion cannot survive without pain, without suffering without poor people. If there isn’t any of that, people start to turn into the more reasonable answers to the question on how we came to be and to the purpose of life rather than to irrational beliefs such as god. And illiteracy is not something the world needs right now. Just think about it for a second. If a person believes that everything came from a supreme being and that all the suffering on earth will be diminished once you are dead as you will go to god’s big hug and a place full of love then you can see how that can kill some of your humanism and most of your interest in finding more about your environment, about the world in general and the universe.

Religion hasn’t improved human life at all. When religion was introduced it may have done so, but everything from the computers we now use, the cars we now drive, the cures for many of the diseases comes from science. Our life is science made. What I mean is that most of the everyday comforts that everyone enjoys come from science and it is very astonishing on how all of us take all these things for granted where it needed centuries of research and questioning to achieve this level of understanding that can be useful to man. Religion served no role in this. Religion did not help this advancement and religion did not benefit from this advancement either.

I see the world changing towards the worse as people reject the new ideas, the new discoveries proposed from science and turn back to being religious and turn back to being illiterate. Global warming is a great issue and if the next president is a creationist one like Bush is it’s not likely that the global warming crisis will be controlled. Religion plays a very important role in Bush’s life which can explain many of the problems with his policies such as science illiteracy, such as war basing it on the concept that god actually told him to go to war, the otherwise almighty loving god.

Which is another problem. If you seriously believe that you have a personal relationship with god, it’s very likely that you will believe anything you want. What I mean by that is that if in your point of view god wants you to do something it’s very likely that you will go ahead and do it. For example I had a discussion with some of my friends and I was arguing that our morals did not come from god. So I argued: ” Do you think it’s immoral to kill someone? ” everyone then answered overwhelmingly “yes” so I argued well what if god actually came to you and talked to you and asked you to kill people in his name, would that be immoral? Then everyone stopped, then everyone had no idea what to say. Then they argued that if this is what god thinks then we certainly have got something wrong. But in further discussion they did say that if god says that it is the moral thing to do, they would go and kill people. You see people’s morals are blinded by their faith as easily as in that example. It’s never right to kill your fellow human beings. Never. No matter if gods or demons or Easter bunnies ask in your sleep that you should actually go and commit such act. That is the correct answer that is the moral answer.

You see religion has a funny way of looking at the world. It doesn’t look at it from a physical point, it’s looking at it from a supernatural point. People that are at the top of these religious establishments actually think that they are the messengers of god and that what they think is right is what should be right for everyone else. I do not believe in such things. I think that an action is right or wrong without involving religion into it. If I did a psychotic episode would probably turn me into killing people in the name of god like many psychotic popes did as well as many psychotic murderers who were unlucky not to be placed at the top of the catholic church, as well as many murderers did for the opposite of god, the devil.

You see if you do not believe in such establishments things such as understanding a scientific discovery without actually having to filter it through your religious beliefs comes easier. You see that keeping your morals aligned with the modern world comes easier if you do not have to filter them again through holy books. Committing murders or crimes comes less easy if you do not think that a divine force is driving you to do it. The world is more appreciated and enjoyed if you do not hold a belief that better things will come to you after you are dead. The world does survive without religion, I don’t see the world surviving with religion for very long. It is actually scary when I actually see how much belief people hold in fairytales but I guess that’s something I just have to accept because like with everything else, beliefs tend to differ even beliefs in science.

God does not exist

I find it preposterous that educated people still look up in the sky and see a “magnificent” being that doesn’t obey any physical rules that created and started the universe. I find it insane that we can look up in the universe around the stars and see ourselves, our existence as more important than anything else.

People with science background and science education cannot possibly look at the cosmos and see something that is indeed different from what you learned, from what you were taught, from what you know there is proof for. The universe is massive, there is no word that can actually describe the insignificance of our existence. There is no literature for something so small. If people were ever able to see atoms or electrons to that level and compare it to our existence, it will not even be close to the level of our relationship to the cosmos, our relationship to the universe. We can’t even see cells, we can’t even see the tiny structures of them and yet we appreciate and understand their existence, yet we value them of no significance in life (unless we incorrectly assume that human life is a single cell, like we incorrectly assume that in the case of fertilized eggs) as thousands of cells die every day and yet we don’t value them at all. Do you think that if this supreme-being existed and created this vastness of things that he would care at all about you? We would probably be the mistake in his experiment.

Can’t people see that religion has so many humane characteristics? Isn’t it just so obvious when you hear the stories and the different theories that every religion system has? If you take the bible and read it to a child he/she would probably take it as a very bad written fairy tale where the happy ending is nowhere to be found. I can make up more mystic stories by just explaining my view of the universe, the vast emptiness and the nothingness in our existence and how lucky we are to be here.

There’s no God, there’s no real reason for you being here, other than the reasons explained in Evolution. But being human as we are, we make mistakes, we look for reason, we look for purpose, we look to find understanding in the simplest question and the hardest one to ever answer – Why do I exist? Well that answer can very well be answered in a scientific point of view… but that’s not enough. Because being human that we are we look for a more satisfying question, a question more to our size, more to our way of life, an answer that can fit in the way we live our lives, in the way we experience and feel the world.

Well there is no answer that can satisfy that question from a philosophical point of view. I can’t really say that I can answer that question. But nonetheless we are here. You and me and everyone else is here. Out of so many million sperms and so many available eggs you are the one that was fertilized, you are the one that managed to go through pregnancy, you are the one that made it out to the world, and you are the one that has the ability to measure and understand the world and live all those experiences and you are the one that you will finally die. That’s life I guess, and since there is no answer to that question, you should try to look down to earth rather than up in the sky for answers. You should start living your lives for the only thing that’s worth living for, for you, for your children, for your friends, for your family and though temporary as we are and they are, that’s the only thing that gives us joy and happiness and we should start enjoying ourselves.

Happy New Year !

Enjoy your lives people.