Atheist

The wine and whine extraordinaire experience afterwork last Thursday was very refreshing as we hadn't had real wine together since the board review has started.  As expected, the main topic was how we did in the recent boards, how we can improve it, etc.  Until we reached the topic of how people deal with failures such as this one.  And a question was raised: If you prepared so long, so hard for something and everything fell apart, would you blame God?

Question is: Do you really believe in God?

Well I have been a rebel without a cause most of my life.  I have been born and raised a Catholic, went from kindergarten to college (and still am) in a Catholic college.  At some point in my life I have turned atheist, then agnostic, the back to being Catholic.  I was never devout mind you, just a regular Catholic who doesn't know his Bible but follow religious dogma somewhat religiously.  But yes, I do believe in God.

During that somewhat drunken moment, I realized atheism is just for the intelligent and the utterly dumb.  Only those who sit at the far end of the spectrum.  I have met many intelligent people who are atheists.  And die-hard atheists are among the worst drinking companions ever.  Having sat at many booze tables in my life there are few topics that I consider taboo unless you talk to someone who is level-headed and up for a truly enlightening discussion: politics, religion and finances.  So when I get these hard-ass atheists with me on the table, I don't argue with them or make any discussion with them.  I just nod my head and sip my beer, hoping to dissuade them from pursuing that topic and move on to the next one.  I do not want to argue if God exists, or why the church is this and that or why the Bible is a compilation of fairytales.  If your mind is fixed on something, nothing can change it.  So what's the point?

I am not a defender of the faith or the church.  I don't know if the Creation story in the Bible is fact or fiction (probably the latter).  I don't know if the other unpublished gospels are to be believed in.  I don't know if what Dan Brown and his likes wrote are to be believed in ( well I wouldn't really know since I don't read crap like that).  But I do believe in God.  It's because there is a God.  I don't have to prove it to you that He exists.  I just know.

Atheists read the Bible so that they can find fault in it.  Atheists learn religion and its history, so they can find fault in it.  Atheists study science so that they can prove it is more superior than faith and dogma. And when the opportunity comes they will drown you in all these arguments trying to confuse you and change your point of views.  This is why to be an atheist you have to be smart or no one will believe you.  You have to be smart so you will understand the Bible and its flaws and to put them side by side compare them and present them to mostly skeptic non-atheists.You have to be smart  to be believable.

I told you that in order for you to be an atheist you either have to be very intelligent or be utterly dumb, right?  Well dumb people do dumb things and since they want to continue doing dumb things they'll argue that there is no god so that they'll be spared from any responsibility, moral and spiritual, from their dumb actions.  Either way, only the smart ones will try to convert you, the dumb ones will just continue to annoy you. 

At the end of the day, when these smart atheists start to argue and confuse me with their almost fanatical beliefs, I just shut down and completely ignore them.  At the back of my mind though, : If you don't really give a damn about God, why spend all your energy trying to make others believe that there's no God?  If you don't really give a damn about God, why are you bothered that so many people believe in Him?  If He is truly nothing to you, then I suppose He wouldn't even need a single moment of your time.  After all, as in showbusiness, any form of publicity, good or bad, is still publicity.