Religion

I have the weirdest conversations with myself when I am in the shower, today it was about religion.

I am atheist. I am brought up atheist, in a quite strict atheist house hold. What is an atheist household you might say. Well, while I was allowed to read any myths or religious stories I wanted, when ever I as a child after reading something, came to my mom and said, well maybe there is something in this story, she would be "No, there is not.". If I would say "Maybe there is a faint chance that God exists" she would say "No god does not exist". But at the same time I was always encouraged to ask questions, not only to my mom, but also to my religion teachers. I was the only atheist in my school for four years untill my brother started school. I was the only Non-christian. For the first four years of my elementary school I did not have religion classes with the rest of my class, they had Christianity class, I had a general religion class (however I was required to learn a prayer or two by heart). That made my classmate very aware of that I was not like them. Then after four years the school system changed and everybody had general religion classes, of course still focused on Christianity, one year 10 out of 14 chapters in our school book was about Christianity, in the remaining four we covered Islam, Judaism, Ancient Greek, Humanism, Buddhaism and Hinduism. I had a teacher who called everyone who did not believe in God a heden to my face, heden in Norwegian does in a sense also mean uneducated and barbarian . I was still the only "heden".

I belive that the human mind have the ability to create an idea and believe in it enough to make it real for them because the idea lives inside their head, this veiw of mine is based on people believeing so strongly that they get heale when all you give them are sugar pills. To me religion is something very personal. I believe that if someone believes in a god or gods, they become real for that person. Following this line, a religion or god dies when nobody believe in it anymore. Same applies to ideas or mythological creatures, if you believe in elves, Santa, dragons, Angels, ET, you name it. Your mind can make it real for you.

I can understand that people need something to believe in, maybe you need to believe that there is something after death, that there is some greater plan to it all, that there is someone taking care of you. I just don't. I don't feel that I need a devine being in my life, and thus there are no gods that are real for me.

Lastly, I did not mean to offend anyone, but these are my veiws and I'll stand by them. I love a good discussion though...