People often ask me what my religion is.  When I tell them I have none, I get one of these 4 responses:

1. "Hey cool... I respect your decision and am not going to judge you for it, regardless of my own personal beliefs." (The world needs more of these people.)
2. "Oh, you're a filthy God-hating Atheist (or Satanic) heathen, then?"
3. "No religion?  No, you misunderstood... I mean, what sect of any number of modern day socially-popular religious spin-offs are you a follower of?"
4. "Oh?  So what awful event in your life turned you away from the True Light that is Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?  Please tell me, I am your friend, I want to help you see the Light and Know Love and Know that He Loves You No Matter What Even Though He Will Send You To Hell for not believing that He died for your sins!  And once you're all better I want you to join our church and help support the mind-narrowing hate-perpetuating religious hierarchy!"

1. "Thank you for respecting my beliefs and not judging me based on yours."
2. "Eat shit and die."
3. "See you in Hell."
4. Example letter (similar to #4 above) and thoughtful, well-rounded reply (both real).

Where Did Religion Come From?
Religion, historically, was a way of explaining the unexplainable.  Imagine if you will: the date is 50,000 b.c.e. ("before current era" for the unenlightened), and a group of primitive villagers, sitting around to dinner around the ol' campfire, witness a bolt of lightning streak across the sky.  The villagers are perplexed, amazed, and above all, afraid (of the unknown), but then the shaman of the tribe steps in to explain this phenomenon, for, after all, that's what she does.  But, instead of telling them that the great streak of light was the result of two electrically charged air masses colliding and releasing gigawatts of charge, she tells them that it was the God of Ugg getting pissed off at them for not offering them a portion of their yak brain chowder.  Obviously, the shaman made up this little tale -- she doesn't know what it is either, but she doesn't want anyone to think she doesn't know or she'll lose her control over the other villagers.

One hundred years later, however, the current tribal shaman, taught by his predecessors all about how the God of Ugg makes lightning, truly believes it himself.  It's what he was taught, it's what he knows, and the original shaman died with the secret that it was all just part of a big lie, invented to ensure that she and all of her prodigies would continue to control how the tribe acts, and since no one has the smarts or the balls to challenge the idea, it sticks.  "Sacrifice your daughter to Ugg, she has been defiled."  "Give your leg of mutton to Ugg, or he will strike you with lightning."  And most importantly, "Come to my church, pray to Ugg, and give me your valuables, so I can tell Ugg to send you to the great hunting ground in the sky."

Now here's the ironic part: 52,000 years later, we know what makes the lightning strike.  Yet we still believe in Ugg.  God, Allah, Buddha, whatever you want to call the mythological omnipotent being of our own creation, he's still around.  Science has explanations for almost every question we ever had, and yet we still have "faith."  We still believe that there is some "great hunting ground in the sky" that we will go to if we follow the shaman's advice explicitly.  And we still believe that someout there, in that vast expanse of space, someone gives a shit.

If there is really some God out there (and I never dispute the remote possibility that there may be), then this being is way too powerful and busy and wouldn't care if you are good to everyone, go to church, say your prayers, tithe until you're broke, and die with the firm belief that you're on your way to Easy Street.  Likewise, this being wouldn't care if you kill your family, rape your pets, paint swastikas on synagogues, burn churches, torture children, or even (gasp) renounced the teachings of some Jewish extremist nutcase who got himself nailed up 2000 years ago.  In all likelyhood, the "miracle" of humanity is probably no more miraculous than the existence of other parasites on earth's surface: we're a cosmic accident, and our existence is neither determined nor guaranteed.

America is an especially interesting case, as it has a certain little document called the Constitution.  This is the rag upon which some long-dead old farts created blueprints of a country that quite quickly became the greatest nation on earth (or so's the general concensus of Americans anyway).  Now, in these old blueprints for democracy, certain principles are layed out: bicameral congress, three branches of Federal government, all that rot that no thinks twice about.  But, there's also a little addendum at the end that sets a few things that these old guys thought of as important -- basic human rights.  These little "amendments" guaranteed a lot of things: limiting the Federal government's authority, the right to protect one's self against self-incrimination, all that crap that we now take for granted.  They also guaranteed something else, something important enough to earn the first slot: the right of Freedom of Speech, and Freedom of Religion.  Why?  To attempt to prevent the pattern of religious persecution against believers of dissimilar religions that governments have been guilty of for millennia.

Unfortunately, this Freedom of Religion has never fully manifested itself, since various Christian morals and values, ranging from mostly harmless to utter raping of the Constitution, have wormed their way into many different lawbooks over the last couple of centuries.  Today it's particularly grim, since in the old days, politicians mostly kept their religious views confined to their private lives, and that behavior has changed.  Listening to any election-year Republican (and sometimes even Democratic) candidates' debate, you'll no doubt hear the candidates flaunting and exaggerating their supposed religious beliefs, throwing around the name Jesus indiscriminately and whoring themselves to the small but powerful Religious Right.  The consequences for future legislation concerning things like personal freedom and choice when these bozoes get elected simply cannot be good.  Everytime I see them emphatically declaring their totally mindless submission to their make-believe deity, I feel close to vomiting... I am perpetually aghast that more people don't understand the gravity of a politician running for office in a sovereign Republic who freely expresses their willing slavery to their "true king."

1. "This country was founded on Christianity."  Any historian worth his K-mart sweater and clip-on bowtie knows that the Founding Fathers were mostly Deist and Unitarian, meaning that they belief only in God as a sort-of scientist that created the universe and then buggered off.  Christianity didn't swing in to any real extent until the early 1800s.  And no, the Pilgrims don't count, because all they really founded was America's perpetually shitty treatment of the red man, as well as our totally ludicrous fear of sexuality.
2. "There should be prayer in schools."  The basic concept of "Separation of Church and State" means that there should NOT be prayer in a state-run education system that requires children to attend; or if there is, it should be held after hours.  No in-class time can be given for "optional praying", as it makes children who don't pray feel like there's something wrong with them.
   
3. "We need to elect politicians that will pass moral laws."  Morality is highly subjective.  The last thing this nation needs is the government controlling our thoughts.  This country was founded on the basic principle of practicing whatever religion or moral system you want, as long as you do so in a community-friendly manner.  Legally imposing one set of moral beliefs violates the principle of Freedom of Religion, even if it's a moral code shared by the majority.
   

Fun Facts About Christianity:

• The Bible does indeed contain a passage that seems to call homosexuality a sin.  This is the line:
  
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." Leviticus 18:22
However, since this is the Bible, you have to take it literally!  Therefore, straight men and gay women are okay in God's eyes, while gay men and straight women are going to Hell.  Remember, you can't sleep with a man!
* Side note 1: Of course, Christians ignore many, many things in the Bible, such as prohibition of eating pork and wearing clothes made from mixed materials, and of course "Judge not, lest ye be judged," so it's kind of funny that they picked this one to take to heart.  Most likely, this is a line some priest or monk inserted somewhere along the line not because of homophobia, but because the union of one man with another doesn't produce new little Christians.
* Side note 2: When you think about it, a man can't lie with another man as with a woman... it's physically impossible, unless he has a vagina.  So you're alright screwing men unless they have a vagina, which I imagine isn't an issue very often.
• Many Christians will try to turn you into a Christian by quoting passages of the Bible, "proving" that Christianity is the way to go because, after all, God supposedly wrote the Bible.  However, they do not comprehend that disbelief in the Bible goes so far as to disbelieve the Bible is really God's word and will continue to quote passages to you as if it were irrefutable!  Because it is their only basis for arguments, you can almost always win an argument with Christians over anything religous just by saying "I don't believe the Bible is God's word.  Give me other evidence."
• Some Christians are so full of their own self-righteousness as to go so far as to condemn other less "holy" Christians who haven't "truly" accepted Jesus as their savior.  As the story goes, Mr. Christ died for our sins -- and in a great big cosmic switcheroo, we all get to use his clean-slate reputation when we face the Big Guy after we croak in order to get into heaven (since even one tiny sin any time in our lives automatically sends us to Hell -- or, as some religions believe, just by being born, conceived through the Original Sin of sex, we're sinners at conception!), and the only way to achieve salvation is to fully accept Jesus into your life.  Of course, if we don't accept Jesus, we get to suffer an eternity of absolute, neverending torment in Hell.  Nice little deal huh?  This particular scare tactic works especially well in converting people, since it's so vivid and preys on the inherent weakness of the human mind.  The most interesting part here is that Hitler, who killed millions of innocent people and caused the most destructive war in all of humankind's history, truly believed Jesus was the savior, and therefore is going to heaven according to this policy... while people like Gandhi, who didn't believe in Jesus (not to mention the billions of people throughout history who have never had any exposure to the Bible or Christianity) are suffering eternal damnation.  Rather strange policy for a god who claims to love his creation.

1. Are you willing to give up all the lies your parents, religious leaders, and peers have been feeding you from birth about how, if you're good and do exactly what they say, you'll go to a nice pretty place full of toys and games and happy people floating around in the clouds which doesn't exist?
2. Are you willing to put up with all the crap that people will undoubtedly be giving you for not being a mindless zealot like everybody else, going day to day supressing your true emotions in the belief that it will somehow fool God into believing you're a good person, worthy of going to heaven?
3. Can you deal with the fact that, once you're religionless, your narrow-minded and brainwashed family and friends may ostracize you?
4. Are you really ready to start believing that once you're dead, you're dead, your spirit will cease to be, and the only thing that will remain are a few memories and some records that will both be lost a few dozen, maybe a hundred or two years after you croak?