I set my alarm clock for roughly 7:06 am (that would be 6:66 am if the clock went that high, mind you) so I can get my day started.  I make sure to load a new kitten into the alarm clock each night before bed.  Don’t worry!  It only administers a mild electric shock at the desired time.  I’m a heavy sleeper, I kinda need wailing cats in order to wake me.  So I grab my trusty hammer and silence my alarm clock, before shambling off to my kitchen (greeting the various syphilitic whores I keep chained up along the way) to fix breakfast.  I personally love a large bowl of baby-o’s smothered in orphan tears, but sometimes I just settle for fried aborted fetuses with a nice side of jehova’s witness intestines.  I like to have a nice stretch while watching the “Today” show, then I go off and shower in virgin blood.  I find that it’s a great moisturizer.

I usually have a little time before I need to go off to work, so I hit the streets to yell at people, and convince them that everything they believe in is absolutely wrong.  If they disagree with me, I simply yell louder and punch them.  I mean, it’s what they were expecting, since I’m a godless heathen with no moral compass.  Sometimes that can take an hour or two, so I have to rush so I can get to work and I need money because aborted fetuses aren’t cheap.  Hey, at least shelter kittens are free!  I get to spend all day at work being nice, and pretending I’m not a hideous abomination of a human being.  I mean, I believe gay people should be able to get married.  Why SHOULDN’T you hate me?

I love to bitch and complain about work all day, but mostly that’s because I have so much to look forward to afterwards.  It’s just a drunken whirlwind of orgies, cock fighting, and sodomizing random people.  I’m slowly working my way through the phonebook on that one, so look out Andrew Aaronson!  Luckily I’m a popular guy, so someone typically finds my naked, passed out body, and is able to get me back to my bed.  You know, I never thought tattooing my name and address on my ass would be useful, but it comes in handy!

That’s a usual day in my life.  Sometimes exciting things will happen to me like we’ll have a pizza party at work or something, but it’s usually pretty boring.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading how atheists are just like everyone else!

Enough fucking talk about cock sucking whores.  In all seriousness, freedom of speech is what this country is all about.  I mean, what would complete idiots like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Laura Schlessinger do without it?  It’s hard to be a complete hypocrite, publicly lie and slander people you don’t like, and drop the N-word countless times, without the wonderful freedom of speech.  What kills me is that people who SWEAR by the constitution are often ones that are willing to completely throw it away.  People who are ADAMANT about freedom of speech!  Well, except when it’s someone who they don’t agree with (I love how that article says a ‘small and unpopular sliver’ of 2% of the country is atheist.  FYI, 15% currently identify as godless) trying to express their rights.  Freedom of religion!  Provided your religion is christianity.

I’ll seriously get off in a random fucking rant if I continue down that path, so let’s keep it rather concise.  Freedom of Speech:  AWESOME.  I don’t agree with A LOT of things that people say, that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to do so.  As soon as I post this on the internet, some dick bag could pick it up, and make me out to be some huge douche.  Do I care?  No, but I have the right to do so.  If I want to say things to make myself look like an ass, I’ll do so.  Yes, in this country you have the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, to whoever you want.  However, always be prepared that you’ll inevitably piss off, or offend someone.  Remember:

With great power comes great responsibility!

I first went to a church when I was 6 years old.  I didn’t really know anything about religion except the odd mention of this “god” guy every now and then.  My new best friend that I just moved next door to, told me that the church down the street gives kids free stuff for coming on certain days.  He then promptly whipped out this shiny gold lock, and my brain went into “ooh shiny!” mode.  So I had to go to this church place and find out what this was all about.

I go to this church, and it seems a little strange to me.  There’s these pictures and pasted things all over the place, and the whole building seems a little…odd.  I get ushered off to the kids room with my friend, and there’s all these kids there.  What do the church people start to talk to us about?  Noah’s Ark!  Now, I was the 1st grader who was always checking out science books, and whose grandmother bought him a subscription for “Zoobooks”.  I immediately called bullshit on this little story.  I mean, all the animals of the world fitting on a little boat, and the world getting flooded…What about the insects?  How could he fit millions of different bugs on that boat?  And BLECH!  Who wants to be around all those bugs!  I hate bugs!

Well, despite how ridiculous that little story was, I kept going.  I enjoyed being around other kids, and not being picked on or being made fun of.  I got to watch little videos, or do arts and crafts things most every week.  They’d prod me to show up on sunday, which I rarely did because it was soooooo boring, and I had to dress up as well.  I honestly don’t remember if I ever asked my parents to come to church with me.  I certainly don’t remember a time that they ever went.  Come to think of it, I don’t even know what my parents thought of religion.  Pretty sure my dad was christian-ish, but my mom seems like she’d be more agnostic, or maybe “christian by association”.  I know she doesn’t push my siblings toward any religion, so I’m thankful for that.

As I continued to grow up and life happened, I kept seeking refuge at this church.  I even went to other friend’s churches.  I never lost my love with science, and it seemed an obvious problem that religion and science just could NOT be reconciled.  I seriously tried!  I did everything I could think of to mix the two, and whenever I talk to a grown up about mixing the two, they rolled their eyes and dismissed me.  For a kid who loved science and had an IQ in the 98th percentile in the 2nd grade…religion just wasn’t cutting it.  I kept going though.

I got involved in my church’s youth group, I went on youth “retreats”, I even did a missions trip to an orphanage in Georgia.  I LOVED that trip.  I met and hung out with some awesome girls, spent time with friends, and got to help rebuild a playground.  I was pressured into being “saved” more than a few times.  So I always did my thing, walked up to [insert location] get on my knees, raise a hand up, and proclaim [insert something about Jesus].  I tried…I really did try so hard to believe.  I couldn’t believe in some guy in the sky watching over me when I just felt like I KNEW better.  People would sing songs about Jesus and what not, and I’d just mumble along or not even sing.  I always felt funny saying things about “god” or “Jesus”.

For the longest time, bible stories just felt like fairy tales to me.  I put things like “David and Goliath” right there with “Jack and the Bean Stalk”.  Of course, they neglect to tell you in sunday school that David cuts off Goliath’s head and parades it around in front of everyone else.  It didn’t dawn on me for a very long time that people believed these things to actually be TRUTH.  When I discovered that…I was frightened to be honest.  How could adults honestly believe this stuff?  This book was written 2000 years ago, and we know so much more than we ever did then!  As soon as I could no longer attend youth group due to being too old, I just left the church altogether.  I now had the freedom to hang out with my friends at will, since I could drive and stuff, and I had a job!

I discovered the internet (hey, I’m old, shut up) and it was time to meet girls!  Yes, I’m a nerd, don’t judge me.  I ended up meeting a girl that lived in Pittsburgh, and I became smitten with her.  One of her favorite things about me was that I *gulp* shared her religion.  We hit it off, I wanted to meet this girl (who was 3 years younger than me) and I sincerely hoped things would go well.  As expected, they didn’t.  We met up, and well…that’s a story for another time.  I will tell you that I went to church with her, and felt so foolish.  I had never felt like that in a church before.  I was so out of place!  With that fact, and as poorly as that weekend visit went, I was just done.

Religion just sort of went on the back burner at that point.  I didn’t care about it in the slightest.  I guess I still called myself a christian, I didn’t even realize I had other options.  I clearly wasn’t Jewish, and Islam was just more Christianity in a different dress.  I met another girl, married said girl, and continued to roll my eyes at any mention of god or Jesus.  I resisted any sort of religion, whether it was invitations to church, or people wanting a religious wedding, or whatever.  Then I learned this word “Atheist”.

Wait wait wait…you mean it’s okay to not believe in any sort of gods?  I can finally live my life without having to call myself something I’m not?  Fantastic!  Then I learned that Atheists aren’t exactly popular.  Meh, who cares?  I’ve never been really popular.  Once again, religion just kinda got pushed aside, because I had to live life, and no one I was ever around seemed to really care about religion.  Sure they called themselves christians, but as most people know, calling yourself christian doesn’t make you christian.  Hell, most christians say other people aren’t christians unless they do X, Y, and Z, which pertains to things only taught in their church.  There’s so many different sects of that crap, and they all seemingly hate each other, at least under their breath and behind closed doors.

Then there was the turning point…my father died.  It wasn’t that he just died suddenly, I had to watch him waste away to nothing over a month period.  There’s a lot more to that story too, but again, that’s for another time.  I thought a lot about life and death during that time.  I had to arrange for his memorial.  I agreed to have it in a church, since most of my father’s side is religious.  My uncle who is a pastor insisted on doing some speaking.  I agreed to it, but I insisted that we have people come up and offer little speeches about my father, like memories and stories and what not.  I knew he would want that.

So the day of the memorial comes.  Leave it to my mother to lighten the mood.  We had gotten a picture of him from his younger days, and framed it for this.  She made the comment as she got into my car “Maybe I should sit on this picture.  Your daddy would love for me to sit on his face”  EW!  THANKS MOM.  Anyway, the thing starts.  My uncle kicks it off and throws it over to me.  I give an 8 minute speech, and I have the crowd laughing.  It was a good time, exactly as I wanted.  Then my uncle…the pastor…gets up there.  He spends two minutes on my father, then TWENTY EIGHT FUCKING MINUTES on Jesus!  It was a fucking sermon, and midway through, he stops and turns to me in front of everyone, and asks “Did your father ever take you to church?”, knowing god damned well I’m a fucking atheist.  I wanted to hit him.  I wanted to do it so bad.  My wife luckily was able to calm me down.  Needless to say, I don’t want to see that man ever again.

My uncle robbed me of closure.  I had people coming up to me afterwards saying how they wanted to say things about my father, but couldn’t.  After that…my mind just broke.  I couldn’t feel anything anymore.  No emotions, not even love, and I could only focus on the bad things.  I hated everything, and it all just seemed wrong.  My emotions swung all over the place when I felt anything.  It did lead to my eventual divorce.  That of course led to a lot of introspection.  That’s when I stumbled across the “New Atheist” movement.  People that thing very similarly to me, people that are well versed on most religion, or at least know how to argue against it.

These people have had experiences similar to mine, and they generally love the scientific method.  I was so happy to discover this, and though it took me some time, I now wear the Atheist tag proudly.  I’m glad to count myself among them as an atheist blogger.  I don’t update nearly as much as I should, but I’m glad that I even have a blog where I can express these things.  I hope that I can one day actually do something to further atheism, or at least help dispel the MANY misconceptions about atheists.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my little story, and it’s helped you understand more about me.  As a thanks for all the reading, enjoy one of my new favorite songs:

And as always, may you be touched by His noodly appendage!

It’s not often you’ll hear me say this, but I am ASHAMED to be affiliated with this army after watching that video.  They sound like bratty teenagers with ZERO conscience, gunning down pixels in an xbox game.  The sad thing is, I do NOT believe this to be an isolated incident.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING EXCUSE for something like this!!!!  They took absolutely no time to actually assess the situation.  They didn’t pay attention to what was going on, and they seemingly only wanted to gun some poor bastards down due to boredom.  This was murder by the US Military, plain and simple.  People still wonder why the world hates us?