I was raised in a Christian family and went to Catholic schools all my life. I was a strong believer in God and all the myths surrounding him. When I got older I started to question my beliefs. I wondered why God demanded that we go to church every Sunday for an hour and listen to some guy talk about how great he is. Going to church never seemed to help anyone grow in their faith, it just seemed to brainwash them more.

When I was about 12 I made a pact with myself that I would never lie to myself, and it is around that age that I stopped going to church. There simply didn't seem like a good reason to. As I got older I started to view the Church less and less as a religion and more of a corporation. The Pope was the CEO of Catholic Inc. He drove around in a limousine, lived in a huge mansion, and owned a private jet, just like any other CEO. The Priests told us that the Pope was God's representative on earth, and that he was infallible because God said so. I searched through the Bible and never found one passage that said anything about appointing Popes period. If Jesus ever really did exist (there is good evidence he did) then Christians have almost always misinterpreted his message. Most Christians I have met have only been interested in pointing the Bible at 'heathens' 'pagans' and 'heretics' to be used as a weapon and an instrument of hate and fear.

I also thought about how it said that God made man in his image, but in my heart I knew it was man who made God in his own image. We made God in our image. The Christian Church has always fought all Scientists and Intellectuals on the basis that they were speaking against God. The Christian Church, no matter how hard it fought, has always had to eat it's words after it was proved they were wrong. The world is round, we evolved from apes, the moon is a big rock etc etc have all been proved.

I also always wondered how anyone could know what the original intention of the Bible authors was. The Bible is a book of oral stories passed through hundreds of years, finally written down and then translated through a dozen languages and cultures. If there was any truth behind the Bible, it was lost long ago.

I fully believe in the teachings of Jesus relating to love and peace and forgiveness, but I believe that he was deluded to believe that he was the son of God. I believe that he was probably the greatest philosopher to ever live, but all the myths about the Virgin birth and resurrection are false. The shroud of Turin was proved false through carbon dating tests and is nothing more than a fraud. I have never seen a miracle, nor have I ever met someone who has seen a genuine miracle either. People say that miracles happen all around us and that we just don't see them, but I could say that little goblins are playing tricks all around us, but we just can't see them. There has been evidence of miracles, but most cases are shaky and ambiguous at best. I'd like to see a TV news reporter actually report on a miracle sent from heaven.

I don't know if I'm a true athiest, because I've seen very concrete proof that ghosts exist, and that psychic phenomenon can happen, but I don't believe in a diety or purgatory or anything of that sort. Of all the religions all over the world, about 20% of people believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Our God is so well known because in the Middle Ages we killed anyone who didn't believe or convert. We also were the ones lucky enough to find the New World and we spread our religion there without competition from any other major religion. The reason that a growing number of people are becoming athiest around the US is because the spread of information is rendering their old beliefs obsolete.

Science is proving the myths of a God and the only reason people don't think that there are many athiests is because we don't have an official church. I read this quote in a comic book somewhere and I decided to edit and add on to it a little "There are no truly supernatural things, there are only things which science cannot explain yet. Everything exists in nature. The only real supernatural things are those created by man, for they have no roots in nature."