Author: Mark Alexander

I haven’t always been an Atheist. In fact, I’m not even sure that’s a completely accurate description of my beliefs at all. But if it means that I no longer believe that some omniscient intelligence created and maintains the Universe, then yes, I am an Atheist.

Do I believe there is something beyond the three-dimensional confines of of our reality? Yes, only because the Universe is proving itself far larger, stranger, and more bizarre than we puny humans ever have a hope of completely understanding.

I was raised in a mainstream Protestant household and we did the typically American thing of attending church on Christmas and Easter. When I entered my teens, my Mom got it into her head that I needed to be confirmed in the faith, and sent me to the requisite church classes to accomplish that. (Where, I might add, I ended up serially falling in love with two different straight boys who I went to high school with.) Much to my Dad’s chagrin (who was not a member of the faith), I got caught up in the pomp and circumstance and I started attending church on a regular basis.

That ended after I came out. I decided that I had no room in my life for a church that had no room in its life for me. Prompted by an acute episode of deja vu upon first seeing the double sunset in Star Wars in 1977,  I started researching other beliefs (including reincarnation), and turned an increasingly critical eye toward Christianity. I came to the inescapable conclusion that all organized belief systems were full of crap, and set out to find my own spiritual path, culminating in ascribing to a whole lot of new age nonsense.

But while undergoing my cancer treatments in 2003, something changed. The themes of life and death took on a new urgency, becoming a regular part of my nighttime ruminations, and I came to the conclusion that there are only two possible outcomes at death: we either blink out completely, our consciousness and the energy that powers us dissipating back into the ether—or that aspect of us that makes each of us individuals moves on to something else. Exactly what that else might be was unknowable—and therefore, in the overall scheme of things, ultimately irrelevant to our life here and now. If there was something more beyond this life, like the Universe itself, it was probably stranger and more bizarre than we could ever comprehend. Neither possibility  frightened me, and I came to be at peace with whatever came my way.

During those many sleepless nights (caused by pain from the radiation treatments, not from fear of dying), the only possibility I could reject out of hand was the Christian heaven/hell scenario that I had been raised on and the attendant bullshit the church said you had to believe in order to attain that promised salvation.

If, when the time comes, and I’m proven wrong and find myself writhing in a lake of molten sulfur (how exactly a non-corporeal entity would feel pain without a physical body is one of a myriad of Christian logic-busters), then I’m willing to accept that fate because I will undoubtedly be there with souls who I have loved during my time on Earth. I mean seriously, would you want to spend eternity in heaven if it were populated with sanctimonious douchebags like Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and other so-called “people of God” who are consumed with hate and doing their level best to make life on Earth a living hell for entire populations?

I think not.

Over the last five years or so, the last vestiges of my new age beliefs have also sloughed off, discarded along with my once-upon-a-time Christianity. It’s all bullshit. We have no way of knowing what lies beyond this life, and while I would desperately like to believe that at some point I will be reunited with long-dead loved ones in some new body and existence, there’s nothing to indicate that this belief is any less fantasy than believing in angels sitting on clouds playing harps. Because of that, I am much more aware of letting those I love know now how much I treasure them and how glad I am to have them in my life.

And with that, I leave you with this, a scenario about as likely as any other…