The amount of information the mind can process is limited. I cannot quote you Homer's Odyssey.
I can however see patterns. The information that passes over my mind makes impressions that do not form complete thoughts. Over time the result is an amalgamation of casually associated patterns that do not exist elsewhere. I come up with little stupid names for these patterns and I write them down. This does not mean anything. There is no method behind how I experience the world or how I react to it. It just exists...as do I. Neither is independent, though I suspect that if I were to die, reality would probably miss me less than I would it.
The fear of death is something I am willing to face. I have been searching for something worthy of sacrificing my life. I will never eat a bullet because I am sad. This is not that type of story.
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However much you think you know about the world...just wait. It will surprise you. Perhaps not pleasantly so, but it will surprise you. I imagine you the reader as someone not to be misled, but as someone I can confide in. I have no choice. No one in my life wants to talk about death, god and the void of space. No one wants to look at the monster that looms behind the mundane activities that fill our lives and consume our days. Let me be honest with you. It is alright to be afraid. If we do this together...perhaps we can make it to the other side with our sanity intact.
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God...if the concept was a brand (and it is in some places), requires that a select few individuals outline and define everything in the realm of knowledge and connect it back to their brand. If god=captain crunch..then the mythology would have to adapt accordingly. Some number of eons ago...captain crunch would have had to have created the world and everything leading up to some child encountering a box of cereal. I know that sounds trite, but that is how theological arguments sound to me...very commercial...very much fabricated.
I was attracted to atheism not because of it's pleasant message, but because those who presented such views sounded genuine if not a little upset at the fact that they were atheists. God is a big promise...heaven even more fantastic, and it wouldn't surprise me if all purveyors of faith were closet atheists. Such a big lie has to be stressful. When you reach the limits of existential thinking and you seek a word for the great and unfathomable scope of the universe, does the conclusion have to be GOD?
I am not trying to recruit you into some sort of organization that has an anti-religious agenda. Much of my day is concerned with feeding myself and avoiding bills. In that sense, you are free to trust me or not. It is your choice. I can honestly say that I have never had a religious experience of any kind. And in situations where i felt my life to be threatened or that of someone I cared for...well I didn't say any prayers and my perception may have been off. I am still here and there is no way of knowing what could have happened if something had gone differently. This is not what reality does. Reality shows you what happens. It happens right in front of you every day. You cannot ever escape it, though we all do try.
Sex, Drugs and multimedia entertainment.
These are not symptoms of an illness...they are lifestyle choices. Our free will is vast, but we allow it to be narrowed based on what we come in contact with on a daily basis. How would I know what the Buddha believed? How would I know what Nietzsche really was like? I don't, but when I read about different views I try to imagine what I would have had to experience to come to the same conclusions as the author did.
Looking back on my own brief life up until now...no experience...not one, necessitates the idea of an all powerful being. Power is an illusion. As is authority.
Violence and the threat thereof is the only concept that I believe permeates human affairs. The fear of extermination. The dread of imprisonment. The despair of losing someone you love.
What is behind these things? If you think it is god, and you are not willing to accept the possibility that countless generations of human beings have been misled, then read no further.
Where we are going and where we are now is the same place. The earth is where gods are made. Your mind is more powerful than GOD. And so is everyone else's.