Cosmic Confessions

I just thought I'd write this up here on my blog. I posted it originally on facebook and then posted it on the poetry forum I frequent but it hasn't gone here yet. So, without further adieu, the shocking and provocative confessional that started all those lurid tabloid frenzies (Oh wait, I'm talking about the wrong thing)....

Written in July of 2008

Over the past eleven months I have perpetuated a grave indiscretion before my friends. For that I am sorry. I have put on an act as a Christian and as a theist in order to maintain a status quo that I established when I was a fundamentalist dogmatic Christian a few years back. It is with this note that I hope to rectify some of the damage I have done and to set aright some of the crooked things in my life.

1. Eleven months ago I became an atheist. I did this for a variety of reasons -- the plurality of Christian denominations, the plurality of religious systems, the lack of physical evidence that God has ever been in contact with me much less anyone else. Most of all, however, I came to realize the role Christianity had really served in my life. It was a metaphysical anchor by which I might moor my own self esteem. That kind of behaviour is to me disgraceful, immature, dishonest, and selfish.

2. I am an atheist inasmuch as I withhold belief in a supernatural being until such time as evidence is presented that conclusively demonstrates the existence of that being. I am an atheist inasmuch as I regard the religious systems of others as genuine mechanisms by which to enchant the physical world as it is experienced by the individual.

3. I am an atheist because atheism is where I need to be right now. As a friend mentioned today, everyone has his or her own path in life. It is unfortunate, however, that I was so distrusting and deceitful.

4. I have never been to Damascus, but I suspect that were I to go I should find nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, whenever I have been alone where no one might observe me, I've felt nothing more out of the ordinary than the often rich experience of my own thoughts. I've never heard a booming voice, seen a burning bush, or witnessed the waters of a great sea part. I've never seen a man rise from the dead, nor found an ass capable of speech (a non-human one, that is), much less seen the sky explode open, revealing a great dome from which great creatures have flown about surrounding a son of man.

5. I have read many works of fiction whose consistency from copy to copy is picture-perfect. There are millions of exact copies of Ender's Game and probably even an extant original manuscript. I have read of hundreds of people who sincerely believe they have been abducted by aliens.

6. As a result of the fanatical monster within that I created in 2005, I have behaved as though I were living in a nation of religious fanatics, clothing myself in a cloak of secrecy and projecting above myself a sacred canopy of lies and deceptions. I grew up with many people around me who took to criticizing what I did and how I thought, leading to me to an obsession with secrecy. But that is no excuse for lying to my friends.