I’ve decided to put MerryAtheist blog in suspended animation for the time being. I’m not updating it frequently enough and don’t have enough time to give it the attention it deserves. This will be my final post (unless I change my mind and revive it someday).

Truth be told, my interests have moved on from religion in the last few months. Sure, it was exciting to talk about all this stuff when my loss of faith was fresh, and it was fun to look back at the strange world I left behind – holding it up to rational critique and frequent mockery (Good times. Good times.) But I’m not the type of person that wishes to spend my life looking backward, and the clear fact is religion, belief, God, and Jesus are now distant images fading rapidly away into irrelevance in the rear-view mirror of my life.

My days are too full to dwell on the irrational and superstitious. I have no need or desire to waste much time on them anymore, having wasted a significant portion of my 47 years already in the fruitless pursuit of such illusions.

I will maintain and (hopefully - time permitting) expand the MerryAtheist site to include content I developed in this blog as well as other topics that seem fitting in the context of my escape from religious superstition.

Originally, the whole site was meant to be a public document of that journey, but the desire to remain topical drove me to devote too much of my limited time resources to the blog; as a result, the overall site languished.

I still think the original goal of this site is a worthy cause; I still think my journey from Catholicism to atheism is relevant, if only as a resource for others in similar straits. One day I hope it will become a compelling account of the flaws and irrationality of theism in general and Catholicism in particular, as I have experienced them.

So this is goodbye for now.

It’s been a fun ride so far, and I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Draconismoi sends a link to a NY Times article on the growing demographics of nonbelievers.

They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.

They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.

Today, I attended a funeral for an eleven year old child who committed suicide by hanging.

I cannot even begin to understand the frame of mind that would lead someone so young to end their life - especially in such a manner as hanging. I hear occasionally of teenagers killing themselves, and such events, as shocking as they are, are at least somewhat understandable – after all, most of us have a pretty good memory of the confusion, frustration, and feelings of inadequacy that went hand-in-hand with our adolescent years. Not that such actions are condoned, but we at least can understand the feelings that led to them.

But what is there to say about an eleven year old who saw life as so bereft of hope that the only solution she could envision was to fasten a rope around her neck and choke out her life? The event leaves me shocked beyond words. I simply cannot grasp how someone so young could arrive at a place where death is the optimal solution.

What was she thinking in those last few moments? Was she wishing simply for an end to her anguish? Was she thinking to make a statement of defiance to her family in such an act? Or was she thinking that she was going to a better place?

I wonder: Was it the hope of an afterlife in a land where things are perfect that led her to make this final decision? I don’t know. I can’t know. And neither can anyone else. The answers to these questions are lost to us.

The loss of this young, beautiful girl is a sword thrust through my heart. It forces me to consider the fragility and precious nature of life. I do not have the faith to hope for something better; as an atheist, I am confronted with the finality of death and the accompanying necessity to fill this life with as much meaning as I can fashion. I cannot help but wonder if this young, beautiful girl would have chosen to pursue life if she knew there was nothing waiting on the other side.

For me, there is no hope for a better existence beyond this brief span of time. I must find my meaning in the day to day, in the labor of living. As counterintuitive as it may seem, I am convinced there is a great deal to gain in an existence that is ultimately without meaning; it is existence after all, which is better than the alternative.

This is wonderful, and worth your undivided attention for about 10 minutes. Really, you’ll love this as much as I did.

Thanks to Daniel Florien over at Unreasonable Faith for the link.

This is the day we pretend that someone can rise from the dead.

In the earliest manuscripts of the earliest Gospel, Mark, there is no mention of a risen Jesus. There is only the mention of an empty tomb. Later additions to the story added appearances by the zombie Jesus, probably to supply added drama and wonder (or to compete with the newer stories that began to circulate which included such scenes).

At any rate, the whole Gospel tradition is very similar to mythic stories. All the archetypes are there: a miraculous birth; escape from the powerful; youthful exploits; wondrous acts; a loyal following; betrayal; a brutal death; and a new hope. If you find the stories of ancient myths stirring but not actually representative of actual events, why not extend that skepticism to your own religion?

Humans are story-telling apes. It’s no surprise that we have been able to weave some amazing myths over the centuries. The Jesus Zombie Myth is simply another example, and not a particularly unusual one, either.

We do love our holidays, however. They break up the monotony of daily living, to be sure, and over time they can accumulate a lot of silly, peculiar additions…

It’s the Friday before Easter, the day Christians celebrate the bloodthirsty nature of their God. I used to go along with it all, thinking that it sort of made sense that God would expect a penalty to be paid for our bad behavior. It took a long time for me to discover the illogical reasoning behind the theology - the idea that we are guilty simply by the mere fact that we exist; that guilt can be passed down through heredity; that guilt can only be removed by blood-letting; that God is unable to forgive without killing something (or someone); and that our guilt can be removed by someone else being punished. It’s all truly bizarre now.

It’s all just another curious example of the odd traditions of humankind. It’s amazing the things we can make up and believe with all our heart.

That we can believe strange things is not necessarily bad. Such beliefs are generally harmless as long as we keep them to ourselves and do not use them to subjugate or harm others.

Then, of course, during this week spent celebrating such superstitions, we have the Pope, who would have humanity turn away from freedom of thought and shackle themselves within the narrow and superstitious confines of his worldview:

Pope Benedict XVI will tonight attack  the rise of aggressive  secularism in western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a  ‘desert of godlessness’.

Of course he is free to think and say as he wishes. But he would do well to remember the oppression and vicious acts of terror and torture performed upon the innocent throughout history to this very day in the name of God. Those of us free from religious notions can easily look at the horrific acts of inhumanity perpetrated by those convinced of their “godliness” and turn away in disgust, wishing justifiably for the “scourge of godliness” to be forever removed from our midst.

We read the Pope’s words and say “A world of Godlessnes? How I wish it were so!”

Here is a somewhat lengthy but interesting video of noted scientist and non-believer Michael Shermer discussing evolution with a scientist from the Creation Museum.

What is particularly striking is her absolute refusal to even consider an alternative to her beliefs. There simply is no room in her world for skepticism of God’s Word. In viewing the video, I was amazed again and again by her lack of objectivity in this regard.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Like Shermer says, this is what happens when you approach every question already knowing the answer.

A friend sent me this link to a Bible Quiz from the folks at Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Thanks, Christopher.

It’s what all the fashionable atheists are wearing these days.