From Altar Boy to Atheist....Part 2

So there I was, 14 years old and rapidly arriving at the conclusion that religion was pure bunk. How did I come to this conclusion? At the very core of my reasoning there were a few facts:

1. Just about every group of people that ever lived had their own version of religion. Each had its own god, gods, or goddesses. There were hundreds of religions out there and they all had different beliefs.
   
2. Each one of these religions believed that it was the correct and true view to have- most preached dire consequences for not believing. This never sat well with me. What about all those people who live isolated in deserts or jungles that, through no fault of their own, never were exposed to the "right religion". It didn't seem fair.
   
3. I was raised in, and indoctrinated into, the catholic faith; I was told that this is the one true path to salvation. Furthermore not adhering to the prescribed rules would end me up in a place called hell.
   

I suppose I should have felt pretty fortunate that, through sheer dumb luck, I was going to be among the few chosen for salvation. (provided I lived by the rules, that is) But I didn't feel so lucky. I had a pretty good grasp of math, even then, and understood basic probability fairly well. Chances were, that the religion I was taught, and followed up to this point, would be turn out to be WRONG! Statistically speaking, most people were going to go to hell for believing the "wrong religion"; and god- at any one point, only had a small fraction of the people following his 'true' laid out path. This was a big red flag for me.

The fact that each religion can point to another and dismiss it so quickly as wrong but still hold onto their particular beliefs is a bit of a non sequitur to me. Each religion explains the divergence between its beliefs and the beliefs of other religions as either: the other guy was primitive, got it wrong, made it up, or is just plain crazy. Ask any Christian, for instance about the existence of Ra, the Egyptian sun god, and they will quickly dismiss it as the superstitious invention of an ignorant populous.(I would wholeheartedly agree) What I found hypocritical was I was taught that Hercules, Apollo, Mars, and Zeus et al. were just mythological "false gods" and rather silly, primitive ones at that. It is nonsense to believe that a god sat in the heavens and hurled lightning bolts to mortals he was displeased with, or that his son was a mutated winged horse. But isn't it also nonsense to believe any of the following:

• We are all born with the burden of original sin because a talking snake talked a woman into eating a piece of fruit from a magical tree.
• A man invoked god and an entire sea parted and allowed him and his people to simply walk across the ocean floor and then allowed the waters to destroy their pursuers.
  
• The son of god was born to a virgin, was executed, rose from the dead, talked to some people while dead, ascended into heaven, and because of this we can now all enjoy an eternity of bliss in an invisible paradise.
  
• An angel appeared to an Arab merchant and through a series of conversations dictated the Koran upon which Islam is based.
• An angel appeared to a convicted criminal and instructed him to dig up a set of magical artifacts in New York including golden plates that had Egyptian inscribed on it. He then used these magical artifacts to translate the plates and produced the Book of Mormon.

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black! If each religion is considered false by most every other, then it seems to follow that all of them are false; to say nothing of the incredible claims that lay at the heart of their faiths. Why are there are so many religions then if none are true? The answer is pretty obvious.

Part 3 to follow....