Who's the fool now?

That "joke" that was sent to me (April Fool Joke) which originated from a Christian relative really bothered me and I want to discuss why.

First I have to premise this by saying I was never a Christian. As a child I felt a disingenuousness in the church that prevented me from trusting it. Besides everyone knows that virgin births are impossible and I couldn't bring myself to believe. Christianity was what I was most familiar with so that's were I started when I felt I needed to belong somewhere. I started by studying different denominations of Christianity. I was familiar with the Southern Baptist denomination and knew that because of my past I would not be accepted by them. I looked into Methodist, Pentecostal, 2nd Baptist, etc. and that I couldn't buy into the rules and dogmas of these and other denominations. Reading the Bible, which every good Christian should do, confused me. After talking to a few ministers about my confusion I decided that if the Bible couldn't stand on its own it shouldn't be used as the handbook for Christianity. I also found out that most Christians don't read the Bible in it's entirety and cherry pick thru it, most times by just attending services, for their own values and morality. That really bothered me.

My next path was to study the Eastern Philosophies. Thru yoga I studied Buddhism and became familiar with the Seven Noble Truths and the path to enlightenment. Fortunately for me I also became familiar with the supernatural aspect of this religion and was disappointed in the departure from reality. I soon abandoned this area of study.

Another thing that I noticed as a child is the total uselessness of prayer and how random events were taken as an answer from God. As I child I was unable to separate the hits from the misses and noticed that the misses were totally ignored or taken as mysterious actions from God. Even as a child it made no sense to me.

As I abandon the Eastern Philosophies I noticed in my studies a particular group of people on the Internet said all the things that had been bothering me about religion. These were the freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists. I began to read about secularism and how the founding fathers consciously kept religion out of our Constitution because of the atrocities committed by theocracies of their day. I began to see that Christianity lies about many things to keep us ignorant and bound to the church. (Evolutionary biology is a huge target now and it's incredible the lies that Christians are buying into. It's sad and embarrassing. Unfortunately it's a testament to the reason the US is lagging behind countries such as China and Russia in medical science.)

Then our country was hit by a terrorist attack now known as 9/11. I listened to as people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwall claimed that we brought these attacks upon ourselves by being a secular nation. I listened as I found out these terrorists were extremely religious people who martyred themselves so they and their families would be assured a place in paradise by killing infidels. Religion was the common denominator and I sought to find out why.

This is how I became a non-believer. I wanted to know about Christianity and I found out many things about it that didn't add up. The more I discover about religion verses the natural world more the natural world makes better sense. Natural science as yet to provide proof of a supernatural force that created something as huge as the universe and something this powerful would leave evidence.

Dictionary.com defines fool as:
1. a silly or stupid person; a person who lacks judgment or sense.
2. a professional jester, formerly kept by a person of royal or noble rank for amusement: the court fool.
3. a person who has been tricked or deceived into appearing or acting silly or stupid: to make a fool of someone.
4. an ardent enthusiast who cannot resist an opportunity to indulge an enthusiasm (usually prec. by a present participle): He's just a dancing fool.
5. a weak-minded or idiotic person.


I think we can all agree that these definitions are what most English speaking people would use when referring to a fool. The little you know about me, by these definitions, I am not a fool. And, I might add, my atheist friends are not fools either.