Something I haven’t really touched on yet. Why not?
For convenience, I describe myself as an atheist. I do have some beliefs about how things should be, and why they are the way that they are. But unless we’re going to to sit down for three hours to discuss them, I’d rather tell you I’m an atheist and be done with it. But since you’re sitting down to read this, I’ll open up a little more. 
I’ve gone through a few stages regarding my religious beliefs. As a Catholic boy I went to CCD for many years, and my family was always at Church on Sundays. My mom is the Italian parent, and her side of the family was all about that. My dad was originally some form of protestant and then converted to Catholicism when I was young. We went through all the motions and I never felt too much pressure to strengthen or prove my religious devotion beyond just attending CCD every Tuesday after school and going to Church.
I remember the day I decided I wasn’t a Catholic anymore. My CCD teacher had traveled to some country in the middle east, and brought back these little amulets for us that were blessed at a site where the virgin Mary had been seen at some point in the past. My teacher wanted to give us each one, but only if we were really devoted to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and all of the things we had been learning about. So we were asked to decide if we felt like we deserved one.
Strangely she then went into the classroom closet and told us to come in to see her, one by one, and we could privately tell her if we were really devoted or not. We would then receive an amulet, or come out empty handed. It was a test of faith…something fairly heavy for a twelve year old.
When it was my turn I went into the closet, looked at her firmly in the eyes, and said “no, thank you.”
She was surprised, and of course asked me why. I told her I just wasn’t convinced anymore of any of the things we had been learning, reading or discussing. That I had seen no proof. And, like Santa Claus, suspected that it might all be made up by someone. She told me to pray for the answer, and I returned to my seat in the classroom being the only one without an amulet around my neck.
In the car ride home, I told my dad I didn’t want to go to CCD anymore. I don’t remember what his response was, but I soon stopped going to CCD, never actually making it to my confirmation like everyone else in my family had.
Throughout later years religion continued to fascinate me. In college I minored in Philosophy with a focus on metaphysics. Years of intensive research, arguments and papers on the subject only reinforced the fact that I had still not encountered or received any information about an organized religion that sits anywhere close to my own beliefs. But many of the theories in my philosophy books spoke to me in new ways that the Bible never had. I’ve touched on a few of these…determinism, synchronicity, etc.
At one point I tried to describe myself as a pantheist, meaning that God is not a separate being but is actually everything in and around us. But then I read a rather convincing argument that pantheists are just atheists, because to say that one believes in everything is not really a religious statement at all, just an observation that nearly everyone would make.
It wasn’t until I discovered quantum physics that I started to realize science has the ability to answer many of the existential questions that, up until now, humans have attempted to explain with myth. The questions have always been valid, but I have chosen not to accept most of the answers by the world’s religions. They have their place in our species’ spiritual evolution, but they are definitely showing their age.
There are a few select theories that I like. For example, that the universe may have started out as a singularity and then exploded, and that once that explosion reaches a certain point it will start to collapse on itself again into a singularity. And so on, sort of like time rocking back and forth from beginning to end and back to beginning, ad infinitum. The reason why I like this is because it explains the idea of fate very well. There is most certainly one most efficient way for a universe full of crap to collapse back into a singularity, and I like to think we’re all a part of that. I know the scientists think the universe is still expanding, which may be true, but who’s to say that we aren’t equally a part of the most efficient way for a singularity to decompose into a universe full of crap? When you look at this from its highest level, we could either be in the expanding or the collapsing timeline without really knowing which one. Or both could be happening at once in intermingling dimensions (déjà vu?). I’m oddly comforted by all of this.
Quantum entanglement, among other things, is another favorite because it gets close to describing my hunches about energy and how people can remotely affect one another. If I say I think something has bad vibes, according to physics it just might. We don’t need to be fortune tellers anymore to say things like this, because we know that there is so much about the physical universe that we still don’t understand.
Most of the world’s religions are all necessary, and I don’t mean to be patronizing. I wouldn’t want them to vanish today. They have established strong civilizations, and kept them in decent working order through morality, ethics, education, health care and whatnot. But eventually I have to believe that the human race will sort of come to say, “Ok, we understand now what it takes now to maintain a healthy and civilized society. How do we teach these things going forward, and progress beyond these older religious institutions in order to get closer to the truth?”
Maybe religion becomes a mixture of physics and ethics, maybe integrating more modern day heroes in place of saints, or maybe something else entirely. Maybe aliens drop down one day and show us a whole new perspective that we haven’t even approached. I think most people believe that last scenario to be inevitable some day, and when it does it will completely change our perspective of the universe.
The bottom line is that I do not believe in a god. I do believe in a few things…which are that I should love as much as I can in my lifetime, strive to create environments where I am happiest and which do not hurt anyone, try to improve myself every day, and constantly try to understand and fulfill my purpose. And I do believe that there is a purpose, whether that be a gigantic universal collapse into a singularity, or some crazy outlandish Matrix-like thing where we are all plugged in as batteries into a giant robot power plant. But there’s something, and I think it’s currently outside of anyone’s understanding.
But, we’ll get there!
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