On that lonely island, staring at the stars on a moonlit night, and seeing the vast cosmos that is out there, I don' mean just a few stars, I mean so many that you tear up just looking at them.
And then realizing the distances and vastness of billions of stars and trillions of worlds, and that you are a being on a planet in one simple solar system.
It's not even comparable to one grain of sand in all the sand on this one planet.... there are so many worlds out there.
And you would deem yourself worthy of naming something so unfathomable?
And that some single omnipotent being could have just clicked a switch and said..."let there be light"... and it was all "just so"?
Me... after I was taken from a single mother... at six years of age, and raised in THE last true orphanage in Illinois. I was taught the bible at the orphanage twice a week, and twice a week we went to church (The Calvary Baptist Church), I was simply put in a "brain washing" childrens home.
And me being an intelligent type, seeing all the hypocrisy of the members and their children, I realized early to glean from the "book" what I deemed would be the "right" thing for me.
I see the ridiculousness of religion in those that teach it, moral values are taught, and then broken, with the promise that if you recant your wrongs you can be forgiven, only to do wrongs again.... rinse and repeat.
Someone else will take the blame for your wrong doings..... if only you believe with all your heart.... again... you can redo you wrongs... rinse and repeat.
The realization of the true vastness of the cosmos did not really hit me, until one night I took my wife (then my girlfriend) out camping on my old 5 acres of property, 10 miles from town... I decided to do a romantic thing.
About dusk, I told her I wanted to show her something, but we would have to go to bed early, even though it was only about 6pm.
We hit the tent....did some bogeying
and fell asleep.
About 2 am I woke her up, we got dressed (summer eve so it was about 70ish), and I asked her if she trusted me... she said yes....I then blindfolded her, and led her about 1/4 of a mile up onto a hilltop. (I was watching the ground and ahead to make sure she did not fall)
I asked her to lay down on her back (I was laying on my side facing her), and to close her eyes tight, I then removed the blindfold, closed my eyes and laid back next to her.
I then told her to open her eyes, and I did the same.... It was the clearest night I have ever seen..... no city lights, just stars..... billions of stars.... and the milky was a big cloud across the sky.
Her sharp intake of breath matched mine..... it was then that I realized this world is just a neuron, in an atom, of a cell, in a body so vast it cannot be fathomed....
Yeah science says it will one day reach the edge,..... but we are just a miniscule speck in something so large, that we cannot have the audacity to think we are the only ones, and that in our limited existence can claim to know that there is only ONE omnipotent being.....
So I guess I can say.... yeah....
I am an atheist.......