Am I an Angry Atheist? Part 2

So, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back?

I was passively watching the TV while doing some other stuff and there was a breaking story on a child abduction in Florida or maybe Georgia.  Something you always hate to hear about.  My second reaction in those situations is to cringe at the thought of having see Nancy Grace’s face plastered on CNN more than it needs to be.  Shortly thereafter, there was a follow up to a case where a mother in Texas had drowned several of her children in the bathtub.  Something snapped in my mind.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of a person committing such crimes against a child.  A child is an innocent creature in the world of crazy adults and how can an all powerful, all knowing God that is said to be “in all of us” allow such a person to commit such an act.  Then it turned to how can such a God not protect the child.  Then I realized there is no such protection, because there is no such being to do that.  The generalization then became, “How can God allow such heinous crimes be committed against his most innocent creatures on this planet?”  This was further extended to young children stricken with cancer.  Extended farther, it became a question of birth defects.  If God is indeed the creator and intelligent designer of human beings, than I’d have to conclude that he did a pretty crappy job.  Not so all powerful and all knowing.

So, that was the straw.  Crimes against children.  It just didn’t make sense to me and I could no longer ignore the evidence in my mind against the existence of a god, in any form or description.  Certainly not the God that is so often associated with Christianity.  I decided that agnosticism was not the right choice for me, but atheism was.  It fit nicely with many other thoughts I had surrounding science and reason.  Once free of that shackle, my eyes opened up to many other issues surrounding religion, science, and politics.  Religion feels the need to directly affect science and politics.  Science is perfectly happy to ignore religion if not for religion’s influence in the political debate that directly affects science.  The Republican Party is directly and heavily influenced by religious doctrine.  I think a majority of scientists lean toward the Democratic Party as they are more attracted to the social liberalism.

I’m sure that I will address more specific issue regarding the crossroads of religion, science, and politics within this blog.

One of the reasons I called the blog “Rubicon” is not because I am a huge Jeep fan, but because of “Crossing the Rubicon” or “Across the Rubicon” has a modern interpretation of “point of no return.”  I have crossed the Rubicon with respect to my beliefs or dis-beliefs in God, or any other deity for that matter.