No, I am not going into whether god exists or not. Maybe the title should have something to do with humanism instead of atheism, but I really wanna focus on how religion never made sense to me and pushed me away from it.

I know religion can be really important for some people, and that it helped many people in times of distress. But that is pretty much where the benefits ends and mayhem starts. Many might have a healthy relationship with religion and church, but that is not the reality of most.

From now on I will use the word church as a general idea of who dictates the rules for religions, I am not going to go into specific details of different religions. But I am going into their influence on history and everyday life.

The main social issues that causes, or caused along history, prejudice, deaths or that slowed down our evolution as human beings are racism, male chauvinism, homophobia, transphobia and poor educational systems. I am sure there are more that I am missing, but just think on how the church influenced on each of the items on that list.

The uttermost form of racism is slavery. Subjugating a whole race or nation was stated as a right on the bible long ago, glad that God decided to remove that part. But the remaining effect of prejudice from slavery times is still very present and is not disappearing any time soon. Using Louis C.K.`s words, it was not a clean shit that you don’t have to wipe.

Feminism is very strong nowadays, and thank God for that (see what I did there?), because women have been having their dreams, opinions and lives crushed and dictated by men and society for far too long. I am sure that a story about how women were created from men and to serve men does not help with that. A book that says that women should learn quietly with all submissiveness and that they should not teach or exercise authority over a man is surely not going to be on my shelve. Neither will I listen to someone that says that women should cover their whole bodies, head included, so they will not receive flattery or give men, other than her husband, sexual thoughts. As if what other people think or do is her sole responsibility.

If you live by rules that forbid you of laying with someone of the same sex, don’t do it. But do not enforce that on laws for everyone else that don’t really care for your proslavery, chauvinist and homophobic book. People lay with people of the same sex and that gives them happiness and joy, other people discriminate them and push them to the edge of society causing suffering and deaths. Who should I choose to support? Happiness and joy or suffering and death?

The earth is not the centre of the universe, the world is round(ish), there is something beyond the sky we see, we should open the human body to study it, that was all heresy and who had a different opinion should be punished. Till it is well proven and it helps people, then the church says “sorry” to all those thinkers and scientists. Humanity has a limit of how fast it is able to evolve it’s knowledge, and it doesn’t help to have the church slowing it down even more.

For a long time the church was one of the biggest voices on defining the laws of society, those times are known as the dark ages, and they are known like that for a good reason. We never had times where we evolved so slowly and caused so many deaths and violence for foolish reasons.

Later we have something called the enlightenment, and thoughts prevailed over god-given commands that we should follow sheeply without questions. We once again began to rise as better human beings and expand our knowledge on a much faster pace.

Once and again the news shows us attacks or wars that are driven by some religion. I believe that as long as we have strong religious leaderships we will have wars and prejudice. History shows us that and I am not foolish enough to doubt history.

If you usually go to the church or to any place of prayer, think of who are the sinners that you are most distant to and understand the least. Are they gay people, people from another religion, people that have no religion? Grab a chair and sit to talk and understand why they are the way they are, maybe they are not that different from you.

Why I am an atheist was originally published in These fucking people on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.