The Atheist Chronicles

I clearly remember the day I lost my faith. I was about six years old and a fervent believer in someone more important to me than god or Jesus. I remember a cousin, about two years older than I was, whisking me down a dark hall in the house where I grew up. He had something important to tell me. In the darkness of that hallway he whispered in my ear five words that I will never, ever forget: "There is no Santa Claus!"

I was totally devastated to learn that Santa Claus was fiction that our parents told us as a way to get us to behave all year long. From there it was not much of a stretch to atheism. No Santa Claus, no god. No god, no Jesus. No Jesus, no Heaven or Hell. No Heaven or Hell, no carrot and stick prodding one to live by all the strange rules of the Pentecostal religion.

That did not mean, released from the rules of religion, I became a juvenile delinquent, a criminal or even an asshole -- at least not a big one. After all, we have secular laws to keep us in place. And I find that most people, not all people, are inherently decent. In fact, some of the biggest jerks I know are members of the so-called religious right: the people who found in their hearts the ability to vote for the opposite of everything their religion allegedly stands for by electing Donald Trump -- a lying, racist, sexist, belligerent, ignorant sinner -- President of the United States of America.

If that is not grounds for atheism, then nothing is! But this is not a book about politics. So with that digression out of the way, this book will look at atheism and the grounds for it and theism and the grounds against it. This book primarily addresses monotheist religious zealots, known as fundamentalist Christians. However, it cannot do that without some background on the history and evolution of religion. And it will touch on other religious sects now and then to give the evolution of religious beliefs and god worship necessary context.

Dettagli