My Atheism, Part 1

Even in the worst of times, knowing the truth of the situation was always better, and the sooner I knew it, the better. For instance, my recovery from my brain injury was actually an enjoyable experience because I understood what was happening, thanks to science. This, my brain injury did not affect my worldview, like many assumed that it did.

I knew three things when I was recovering from my brain injury. I knew that I was a vegetarian, I knew what I was going to school to do, and I knew that I was an atheist. I recovered very well from my brain injury, which caused some "survivor guilt", for lack of a better term. I wondered why I was recovering so well and considered that it might be something supernatural. When I explored my thoughts and what I knew about my accident, I realized that there were natural factors to my recovery, the most significant being that my injury simply was not bad enough to cause permanent harm.

This did nothing to support my ego, like thinking that I was better than other people or that something mysterious had an affect, but I was proud to be able to apply reason to my situation and find an explanation that can be tested*.

Two atheists I know have chronic illnesses that will eventually kill them, one possibly in the next couple of decades (24 year-old). The other one (20 year-old) may have more time. These are two people around whom I feel comfortable stating my actual atheist viewpoints, like that the bible is just another [damned] book, written by people. I'm comfortable stating that there is no afterlife around these people, knowing full well that their lives are likely to end much sooner than my own. These are atheists in foxholes.

* Imagine you were able to create a brain injury in others in increasing intensity and monitor their recovery. Conducting this experiment, however, would be painful and occasionally deadly. The loss of life for some and the loss of mental capacity for pretty much all the other people in the study is unacceptable to me because I assume that there is no afterlife, which is an important thought in my own atheist cannon.