Gospel of Atheism
1 Salvation by atheism
2 What is self-esteem?
3 Why is self-esteem important?
4 How to love yourself
5 You want to be happy
6 You can be happy
7 To love yourself means loving yourself alone ultimately
Fear is the father of evil
9 Nobody makes you unhappy but you
10 Let happiness come
11 Be easy to please
12 You just need to see your worth
13 Egoism is the way to go!
14 Distracted selfishness is your salvation
15 See that you are not a sinner
16 Be your own person
17 PT 1 Only God you need is you!
17a PT 2 Only God you need is you!
18 You have a will but it is not free in the religious sense
19 There is no free will and we don't really want it
20 Belief in fate is not really that bad
21 Liberation and guilt
22 Forgiveness in the popular sense is a snare!
23 Hatred in a spiritual disguise
24 Probability not possibility is what counts
25 Using reason correctly means protecting yourself correctly
26 There is no God - be your own God
27 Discard the oppressive God belief
28 Belief in God undermines your self-regard
29 Don't condone "God's" often cruel plan
30 Religion is harmful fantasy
31 Prayer is patronising
32 Harm of crediting revelation
33 Miracles are a toxic belief
34 Fast inner transformation for the atheist
35 Don't expect too much
36 Atheism in a positive way
37 Transforming your inner self
38 Feeling that life is meaningful
39 Mature optimism
40 Irresponsibility of the afterlife doctrine
41 Difference between right and wrong
42 Being fair
43 Value on human life
44 Can an egoist be a martyr for others?
45 Animal rights
46 Ways of being complicit in society's evil
47 Lying and stealing
48 Gossip is a plague
49 Need for social regulation
50 Proper relationship of church and state
51 Value of education
52 Evils of marriage
53 How to have a happy love life
54 Erotica is harmless and to be enjoyed
55 Overview, pillars of atheism
55a Essentials of atheism
56 About Humanism
57 Humanism is not a religion
58 Atheists here are the rules if you want them!
59 Being an atheist in a religious world
60 Making friends for humanist atheism
61 Spread the good news of atheistic humanism
62 End goal of atheistic humanism
63 Theorems of atheistic humanism

The First Pillar: Legalised Revenge Repudiated

If I believe in free will I will not force that belief on anyone. A dog does not have free will but feels free. That is why it is able to be happy. We could be the same. The free will belief cannot be proved. There are many people who do not believe in free will or who think they do but don’t really and their rights must be respected so they should not be treated as free beings for that is abusing them just like treating an adult as a child is abuse. There are many more who believe that though we are free we are partly forced to do what we do by psychological forces so that nobody is in a position to judge anybody. An inner force could have made a person who was planning to commit a murder go out and do it so that the person is only partly to blame but not guilty of murder.
 
To accuse a person of doing wrong of their own free will is to slander and despise them. Free will is a theory and should be kept out of the law. To judge people as guilty and to punish them accordingly is revenge, trying to make a wrong and what is intended to be a wrong to be a right.
 
We regard then such doctrines as that God punishes rightly, and that Jesus took the punishment for our sins and that the law should take revenge on wrongdoers to be evil and an incitement to hatred and oppose them. The teaching that we must love sinners but not their sins implies that sinners are evil for you cannot say that John painted a bad picture without saying that John is bad as well. The only exception is if you deny free will for then it is the forces that make John act not John that are to be blamed. This teaching is a sneaky incitement to hatred.
 
The purpose of the law returning evil for evil should not be to punish but to deter, correct and reform and make the criminal make amends to society. We will carry on as when we believed in punishment except we have a different motive. That’s the only difference.
 
Disbelief in free will need not make us change our lives because if we are unfree beings unfree will is not stopping us being normal people. It’s the attitude that is important. It is a charitable attitude we are trying to preserve here.
 
The Second Pillar: Marriage is Abuse
 
I believe that marriage is an empty contract, it’s null and void. Marriage must not be sanctioned by the state or protected by it. Marriage contravenes the rule that the state must not take orders from the Church. Marriage suggests that some higher power has decreed that sexual intercourse between husband and wife is the norm so it is a religious construct.
 
Marriage attempts to bind by law what should be bound by affection alone so it is manipulative and deceitful. It tries to make people choose each other the once when they should be choosing each other every day.
 
All the alleged benefits of marriage can be gained without it provided the law is set up right.
 
When you get married it is because of how you felt about the person in the past and how you feel in the present but how can you intend to stay with that person forever for you don’t know what changes will happen? In short, you can’t really mean the vows though you think you do.
 
Marriage implies that divorce is wrong for your spouse is closer to you than your mother and father and you can’t divorce them so you can’t divorce your spouse. It’s a prison.
 
Marriage implies that society and the Church have the right to control your sex life and tell you when to have babies because it is asking them for permission. You could use an alternative but you don’t you just legitimise your sexual union in the eyes the law which is looking for permission. In fact, it is none of their business. Marriage insults one-parent families and is discriminatory by inferring that these are not the ideal. The truth is, any family situation can be a success if people try hard enough. Sexual tastes vary from person to person just like our taste for food and drink does and marriage discriminates against those who don’t like intercourse for it is necessary for marriage to be recognised as valid. It discriminates against homosexuals though if sex is consensual and reasonably safe it is not wrong. It discriminates against those who thrive in non-monogamous relationships – and encourages those for whom monogamy would not be normal to imagine that monogamy is for them which has usually disastrous results.

The Third Pillar, Be Free Spirits
 
I believe that God even if he exists and even if I take comfort from him I must not take orders from him. If I refuse to kill an enemy because I see it as wrong then that is better than not killing because God commands that I must not kill. It is better to need no commands but to know what is right. If you don’t need a commander you don’t need a God and are a grown-up.
 
We have to be entirely to blame for evil for if God is to blame he is not good or God for then he is a failure. We can’t take orders from God then for that would involve obeying his command to promote belief in free will or sin which is a deliberate crime against him.
 
When it is my judgment that decrees that if I should listen to God or not it follows that I should think independently as long as I try to be as informed as possible. I should not let God tell me what to think. If he is good he will understand. This is practical Atheism. It’s living as if there was no God and always trying to do what is best for others without worrying about him – he can look out for himself.
 
What prayer can do, positive thinking training can do better. If you love yourself you don’t need prayer or God for then you have the power to heal yourself emotionally and need fear nothing and no one and survive their attacks. Prayer is offensive because it says only God can help so it demands to be put first.
 
Miracles, like the resurrection of Christ, are promoted by religion as evidence that God wants us to surrender to him. The truth is that nothing has the right to ask that. Another thing, religion is surrender to God but its leaders get all the benefits of this and there is no doubt that religion is intrinsically demeaning no matter how much good seems to do. God is necessarily a king so anything that loves him must be seeking to enslave us to the men who claim to represent him. Nobody has any business telling me what to think. They may suggest if I want to hear it but that is all.

The Fourth Pillar, Love the only Law
 
I must learn to enjoy helping others. I must be a cheerful giver of my time, my ear and my honesty. I must be as optimistic as possible because that gives me greater contentment and worry will not stop bad things happening and is a waste of energy.
 
I cannot help others unless I like them or helping them at least a tiny bit. The liking causes the action. Liking is getting pleasure from something so liking is a selfish act. So when I help others it is because I love myself that I do so therefore all love is really simply self-love. I love myself alone in the sense that I value them and I love others in the sense that I value what I get out of them and work for their benefit because it pleases me.
 
I must love my neighbour not as myself but love myself by loving my neighbour. By loving yourself alone you love your neighbour because that is the only way you can be of maximal benefit to your neighbour.
 
Love your neighbour as yourself means you must withhold some love from yourself for your neighbour. It is designed to destroy your self-confidence so that you become a slave of religion and society. We like to define love as liking helping others and being good for them. That is what all forms of Humanism mean by love – and human beings want love to mean that. That means that when you love yourself you love others the only way you can. The paradox is that loving others is loving yourself alone.
 
Animal rights must be implemented. Animals have the right not to suffer. The Humanist must hold that the killing at least of the higher animals except when human life is threatened is evil.
 
Humanists must make their own decisions on Euthanasia and Abortion. As a rule, as long as something is prevented from abuse as much as possible it should be tolerated if enough good people don’t see anything wrong with it. That is why we must agree with the legalisation of abortion for it is possible that those who are convinced that it is not murder in the early months are right.
 
Increasing human happiness is what matters not the will of God. We can’t be sure what he wants so we will make our decisions without him.
 
The Fifth Pillar, Clip the Wings of Religion
 
Religion is men telling me how to live and influencing me in the name of God. Nobody wants God unless they find him attractive which means they are only after their own gratification so their feelings are the real God for they are the real goal. Therefore to serve God is really to serve the men who make the rules in his name. Do not be manipulated but be free of religion.
 
I must promote secularism (separation of religion and state) because it looks at problems and their solutions only on the human level. I must resolve to correct anyone who opposes secularism. If we start bringing in gods and magic into our politics we will end up getting nowhere for no two people can agree on what their deities want us to do so it is simpler to keep the state secular. It’s hard enough to decide and do the right thing when you take one world into account without involving God’s world as well. There is no other way. It is not enough to stop the Church meddling in the affairs of the state – the Church will still be able to manipulate the state if it has an undue influence on the people. The taxpayer should not have to pay the state and the Church to let the Church spread its propaganda in the schools to the vulnerable and easily conditioned. It is important to get people to look with clarity at all issues from as many angles as possible so the secular voice must be raised caringly but loudly and firmly.



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