Why call it the 'Church of Oblivion?' Well, isn't that what we hip and trendy atheists believe in? We believe in absolutely nothing. Soooo...why not sing paeons of praise to the concept of oblivion, the idea of endless nothingness, the fate that awaits all esteemed members of the human race once our inevitable end comes along? Sounds good to me!
See, we atheists need no belief in silly little notions like a purpose in life or seeing meaning in any aspect of existence, because we're better than that! We know life has no meaning other than that which one chooses to impose upon it, and we don't fear death, so what do we need to posit the existence of an afterlife for? After death, there is nothing! Once your biological brain dies, well, look what we have to look forward to: absolutely nothing! Endless, calm, peaceful nothingness. Complete, absolute, and eternal. What better reward could we possibly ask for after toiling ceaselessly through life for seven or eight decades? We are atheists, and we want to do all our thinking only when we are alive! After that, what can be more pleasant than an eternity of unending nothingness? In other words, a total lack of existence, sans the burden of emotions, and feelings, and intellectual discourse, and all of that rational thought that we are so fond of telling everyone that we have in spades.
But that's not the only appeal of atheism. Isn't it great to know that nothing we do while alive, nothing we have worked so hard to strive for, nothing we have ever thought or felt, means, well, anything in the scheme of things? Hell...er, damn, there is no scheme of things at all! We are conceived, we are born, we live, and then a few decades later (if all goes well!), we die. And that's it. Nothing complicated or difficult about that. Religious people, or anyone who believes human consciousness is more than our physical existence, complicate things needlessly and ask too many damn questions. That is why science has no place for such thoughts or questions. And that is why we atheists are so important to the world; who else will bitch and complain about how offensive it is when someone dares to breach any of these questions outside of church or outside of a class or seminar about philosophy? What would the world do without us?
Okay, maybe we do have to face facts and come to the realization that atheistic societies, like our dearly missed Soviet Union, had as much problems, as much wars, and as much ethnic hatred as any overtly religious society. But we need to blame something for all the ills in the world, and we certainly can't question the current socio-economic system, or the existence of money, etc. Nooooo. We have to blame religion. We have to blame irrational thinking. After all, fighting wars over money and resources that are plentiful enough to be shared by the entire world isn't nearly as irrational as believing in deities! Also, blaming religion is better than blaming the Jews, or the blacks, or white heterosexual males, or any other racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender oriented group for all the problems in the world, right? The lesser of two evils is always better than the greater of them, correct? And it's certainly better to blame spiritual beliefs and the very concept of spirituality than it is to complain about money, which is the lifeblood of the current system far more than any spiritual belief is.
Just imagine what the world would be like without atheists. People would be celebrating Christmas! People would believe that anything which science has yet to prove might be real! We all know that all religion is like organized religion, and we don't need to do research or fact-checking to believe it.
Okay, granted socialists are very often card-carrying atheists and they blame the system itself for most of the problems in the world, but at least they are cool and rational by being atheists. They don't ask too many questions about the nature of the universe, because they believe that science has already answered everything that needs to be answered. So as much as socialists suck enormous donkey genitalia, at least they think rationally about the universe, and we have to give them that. After all, asking difficult questions about the universe, and pondering imponderable concepts, is just so irrational! What we see before us is all that exists! There can't possibly be anything else. Because if there was anything else...well, then that might mean that religion actually asks valid questions once you wade through the morass of haughty moralizing about sex and marriage that organized religions tend to do. And since we can't possibly conceive of the idea of religion being anything other than what organized religions are like, we know people would flock to organized religion in droves if science ever started pondering these questions about the universe. So we, as atheists, devote our lives to keeping science free of asking the most difficult questions that can be asked, and concentrating solely on that which is relatively easy to prove or disprove under the current level of technology.
Which reminds me of another thing so great about atheism, and a cornerstone of its great appeal to the masses. It's obvious that if someone ponders the existence of an afterlife, it means that they are afraid of death. They are afraid of the endless nothingness that we atheists just know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is in store for each and every one of us. And what is so scary about that? Facing up to the inevitablity of absolute and eternal oblivion shows how courageous we atheists are. After all, why should we fear a type of existence that is actually the antitheses of existence itself, where fear or any other emotion cannot possibly be felt? Which leads to one of the Church of Oblivion's best slogans:
"There's nothing like NOTHING!"
Check it out, people! The above is what awaits you after death! ^
Just think of the appeal of atheism. No more big questions about the universe. No straining of the brain to ponder difficult concepts. No wasting our time believing that life has any meaning, that learning has any meaning, or that anything in existence has any meaning. An atheistic lifestyle is as simple as it comes, and as meaningless as it comes. We don't believe in spiritual growth. We embrace secular humanism, and we prove that you don't need to believe in higher powers in order to be a good person who loves their fellow human being. Okay, granted we haven't created any great art or great philosophy to compare with those who do ponder these questions about the universe, but so what? The world can live without great art and great philosophy, because everything--including concepts of beauty and thought--are ultimately meaningless. All we need is science, and all the beauty we need is the beauty of belief in an endless nothingness after we die, along with the idea of a cold, unliving universe that came into being entirely by accident and never had any meaning to it at all.
Okay, I will concede that many open-minded religious people do believe in evolution. But there is all that bullshit about Intelligent Design! That is just a way to force creationism into science classes, dammit! A cardinal sin! (Well, we don't actually believe in anything like sin or karma, and I apologize if using that figure of speech offended any of my fellow atheists, but I was just trying to make a point...). Evolution occurred entirely at random and by accident! Humanity and consciousness (which is totally within the biological brain) are nothing but major accidents that add nothing special to the universe! Anyone who believes otherwise is obviously an irrational twit who can't deal with the idea of living a life devoid of meaning.
Many irrational people believe that anything in creation needs a designer. Oh really? Then who in oblivion created the intelligence that supposedly guided evolution along the path that led to us, huh? You fucking tell me! See, I just discredited all of these difficult questions about the universe and humanity's place in it by one very clever and very sly utilization of the old "chicken or the egg" schtick! Damn, are we atheists good or what? ;-) Now even the most open-minded thinkers in the world cannot argue against atheism!
Okay, I'm not pretending to know if the conditions of the days before the universe were different from those that we see today, but since science can't prove it was any different than it is now, I think we atheists can feel free to assume that it never was any different, and that the rule that something can exist entirely be accident and without a design intelligence is still in effect now. After all, we only believe what science can prove; whatever it cannot prove, well, it's best not to ask questions about anything unless we are reasonably certain that modern science can either prove or disprove it within the next decade. All theories are believed to be true until science later decides without a shadow of a doubt that they aren't truth. As good atheists, we loathe the concept of faith, but it's okay to have total faith in science being able to prove the existence of absolutely everything that actually exists. There are always exceptions to every rule, right?
Okay, so what can we rational atheists do to honor our great Church of Oblivion? What can you, a devout atheist, do to promote our glorious way of thinking? Simple. First of all, you can deride and insult anyone you see asking important questions about the universe that science cannot currently prove. Tell them in no uncertain terms to ask those questions only in religion or philosophy classes or seminars. Tell them such questions have no place anywhere else, and that such questions are to be considered the provence of religious people and philosophical nitwits only. Also, get extremely angry if you see someone saying a prayer to any mythical deity in a public place. Bitch to high heaven (I am sorry if I offended any of my fellow atheists by using the word "heaven," but I assure you that I don't believe any such place exists) if you ever hear someone say something like, "I put my heart and soul into this!" or mentions the word "soul" in any way, shape, or form. In fact, it would be a good idea for us to start a campaign demanding that record companies no longer use the word "soul" in referring to any category of music because it may imply the existence of the human soul, and no one may dare mention such an irrational thing outside of church or a religious class/seminar. Please keep in mind that we need to be as pushy with our lack of beliefs as the fundamentalist religious people are with theirs, otherwise we may lose our appeal and fail to get new recruits to our faith in total meaninglessness about existence, our devout insistence that life is nothing more than an elaborate accident, and our total certainty beyond a shadow of any doubt that consciousness ends completely and absolutely after the cessation of the physical brain at clinical death.
Also, bitch to high oblivion (there, is that a better figure of speech for us to use?) every time you see someone celebrating Christmas in a public place. Make sure to tell them how irrational such a celebration is and that people like us will have no part in it, even if it means we have no special days off of work during the year.
Okay, time for some more great, life-affirming slogans for the Church of Oblivion:
"There is NOTHING to look forward to!" Heh (and you know we mean that literally!).
"We don't need meaning or purpose to be happy!"
"Happiness is no match for nothingness!"
"As I move through the valley of death I fear no evil because nothing at all awaits me in the end."
"Don't worry about life; it all amounts to nothing in the end."
"Be happy while you live, because there is nothing after you die."
"Look forward to nothing, because nothing is all you will have in the end."
If anyone who joins this church of no miracles and nothing at all has suggestions for any other cool and catchy slogans, please e-mail them to me! The more slogans like that we come up with, the more appealing our system of revering nothing at all will have :-)
And I will also print hate mail here in a special section I will add to the site once I start receiving some of it, followed by a rational response from me, so to all those whom our church happens to piss off--please send in that hate mail! I do look forward to it, but not as much as I look forward to...nothing!
