A few folks wanna know why I'm an atheist. I'm not planning on sugar coating this with any platitudes about how religion helps some folks cope with the brutal facts of life they never asked for and don't deserve; it does do that and it does lots of useful things. But that's not what this is about.

If you don't want to know, stop reading ... now. I mean it, stop reading this right now. If you've recently lost someone or are about to lose someone and religion is the one thread you're hanging onto to keep from going bonkers, don't read this; If you need to feel that humans have some kind of special place in the universe and without that special dispensation, it's all 'for nothing', don't read this; If you're easily offended and/or intolerant, don't read this. Normally I'd be happy to induldge all that, but in this one singular case I'm not going to be terribly empathetic about people complaining.

And, I'm gonna do this thing in two parts; one today and one tomorrow. The first trying to explain what it feels like to be an atheist, the latter part on why I'm an atheist. There will be some overlap.

What it feels like to be an Atheist

I've always been an atheist, I know nothing else. From my earliest memory of considering the question, I'm talking maybe age three or four, I was skeptical as hell. The God stories just didn't add up. I'm amazed everyday of my life that everyone isn't an atheist like me. But they're not, I have no idea why that is, but it is reality. And based on many questions over the years it sounds possibly hard for someone who is not one to understand it. So follow me for a bit if you can. And I'll try to describe the world as seen through atheist eyes.

Imagine that you live in a world where 90% of the people around you sincerely believe in something that appears to you to be downright whacky, if perhaps relatively pleasant on the surface in many respects. Say they believe in Santa Claus; beard, the big red suit, the flying reindeer, the sled loaded with a billion gifts, the North Pole Workshop, Mrs. Claus and the elves; all of it.

But in this fantasy world, they're not content merely to believe in Santa Claus, they want you to publicly agree all the time that you also believe in Santa, in their specific version of same, and they pressure everyone else in numerous ways to pretend that they're not strange or childish for believing in this. They don't just limit it at that even, they insist everyone kiss their ass about their Santa belief every damn day of their lives and if you don't humor them at the drop of hat under any circumstances, you're being disrespectful, you're out of line. No matter how much you humor them, they always demand more.

Imagine, seriously imagine for a moment now, that these people, the vast majority of the electorate, vote for politicians based in large part on what they think Santa wants, campaign speeches all end with "Be good or Santa won't come to visit". And most of these voters won't even consider voting for someone who doesn't believe in Santa Claus and his factory at the North Pole. Yet they routinely congratulate themselves as belonging to the most graciously tolerant and open minded people in all of history.


***

Still, incessantly they recruit you, incessantly they beat you down anytime you open your mouth and try to engage in a real, honest, thoughtful discussion, with the same damn cheesy worthless lines you've been hearing for years now. And from time to time, when you finally convince someone, say someone who is trying to recruit you to accept that Santa is a real entity and really does all those amazing things, that you're not buying it merely on their say-so, they stalk off screaming things like "OH I get it! You HATE Santa Claus and you HATE Christmas and you HATE getting presents, and you're trying to get even by pretending you don't believe in Him. Well, I'll be laughing this Christmas when I'm opening my presents and your only gift is a brand new brain tumor for being bad".

Imagine, as you puzzle your way through this temporal menagerie called life, full to the brim with more of the functionally insane humanoids that make the fabric of experience; bosses, girlfriends, pals, enemies, and role models, that Santa reminders are on every coin, every paper dollar, on every street corner, on every news show, on every cable network, that there are radio and TV stations that are dedicated 24 hours a day to extolling the virtues of Santa and the power of his mighty Sled. Every now and then you come across a fellow traveler who also marvels at the insane people, and you might become friends, compare notes, and laugh about the crazy mother fuckers, but it's a rare thing to meet them in person.

***

And sure, you're used to it, it doesn't really bother you most of the time because you just don't think about how totally fucking nuts the people around you are or what easy prey they are for the shameless predators of this loony jungle, as long as they're kept from hurting you or enacting their crazed legendary tenets into law and screwing up your life, but it's every damn place you go and it's getting worse and worse. The Santa Clausians are becoming more demanding, more powerful, more delusional and more arrogant every year. You grew up swearing your allegiance at the start of every school day that America was One Nation Under Santa from kindergarten on, and now some people are questioning the usefulness of that tradition, and pointing out it could be seen as blatant brainwashing, and they're being attacked day and night by Santa apologists and compared to pedophiles in the process. The entire Congress shuts down to pass a unanimous amendment supporting saying Santa in the Pledge in School and recites it on the steps of the capitol, shrieking the word Santa out, playing to the cameras and the demented Santa believers on the other side of the optical pipes they're attached to. Which is more comforting? That the leaders of the nation are lying and pandering to Santa believers? Or that they actually believe it also? Hell of a choice, eh?

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