Atheism

Someone told me I would go to hell if I didn't stop being angry with God...if I didn't stop questioning Him. I deleted that email immediately with a deep breath and shaking hands. I wish now that I had saved it...printed it...framed it. For it was in that one instant that I realized I wasn't angry with God anymore...I didn't doubt God anymore.

I heard a door slam shut and in that instant I realized that I simply don't believe.

And that is where I found my peace.

No longer begging after a God who can never fulfill my needs has made me see life in a way that I never have before (it's funny how the threats of eternal damnation lose their power when you don't believe in them anymore).

I firmly believe and state it here for the record that this is it. This is all there is. And we better not waste one single second of it.

How do I know this? What was there before I was born? Nothing. At least nothing that I am conscious of. I can get all scientific and talk of potential and kinetic energy...but I know, as sure as I'm sitting here, that my existence lives on after I die on this earth...not in some lavish storage facility in heaven.

I was with my dead sons in this life for a short time and that is all I'm going to get. There is no more time. Whatever it was that made them a part of this existence is no longer. That makes me immeasurably sad. But it is a fact of life...of existence. That we all, at some point, simply cease to be. Just as we, at some point, began.

Before I was born there was nothing (at least, nothing that I remember). I anticipate that my death will be the same. There will be nothing more. And I am freed by that thought because it means that I have THIS moment to savor...THIS life to live.