Why I am a non-theist...

..or, why I'll never be president.

Ok, I've given this a lot of thought, even more reflection and have come to a heartfelt conclusion: I am an atheist. It's not something that one decides, but rather something that one discovers. If an examined life is not worth living, then my examination has determined that god-belief is not worth wasting one's life on-- and may even be dangerous.

Sam Harris' latest book "The End of Faith" is an excellent diatribe against liberal monotheism, stating that such tolerance for irrationality by modern, thinking homo sapeins just acts to feed the inane and destructive institutions buiilt around religious belief.

Islam is the latest deadly iteration of violence in the name of religion, but Jews and Christians are just as guilty of fueling the hate game based on silly fantasies regarding god-belief. The historic atrocities done in support of Judeo-Christianity are exponentially worse. The world is becoming a smaller, more dangerous place with nuclear proliferation and WMD's becoming more available, and the human community cannot afford to perpetuate divisive, and often deadly, irrationality any longer.

Of course, this is not to say that profound wisdom is absent from the great religions. On the contrary, the Bible, Tibetan Book of the Dead, and I Ching (all texts I have become familiar with to varying degrees) contain fundamental truths that are presented in understandable ways, although they are often targeted to their specific cultural group. We must read these texts in the light of our knowledge of science and experience, and try to understand the political and social motivations present at the time of their writing.

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Plato's Dialogues likewise contain fundamental truths, only without the baggage of irrational fantasy. We must face the fact that a huge ark was not built by a 500 year-old man to save the world's animal species. Science does not support re-incarnation or resurrection. Mohammed and Moses did not converse with God to bring the Word to the people.

We as a human community do not have the luxury of ignoring rationality anymore. We must finally fully wake up to the idiocy of believing in sky wizards, magic and miracles, and we must especially see the dangers of believing our fantasies are somehow more informed than theirs.

All god-believers, but perhaps especially the reality-based liberals who should know better, need to come to terms with this.

Our planet depends on it.