by Eric Abent

Created on: October 08, 2009   Last Updated: October 12, 2009

Here is my call-to-arms, as it were: The time has come for humans to have more faith in humanity. Not God, or Jesus, or Satan. Not Buddha, Allah, Zeus, L. Ron Hubbard or the illustrious Earth Spirit, but humanity. Before I tackle the question "if you don't believe in God, where do you get your morals?" (which is a question I run into way more than I care to discuss), I am making this general statement because I feel that humans put faith in every little thing but themselves. We are "too weak," or "too selfish," or, even better, "too simple," to handle things by ourselves, and more often than not, I see people putting their future in "God's hands," instead of taking charge of their lives and saying "Regardless of circumstance, I want to get through this, and I can succeed." This, quite frankly, needs to change.

This is where I feel this whole misconception of a correlation between Godlessness and a lack of morals comes from. As upsetting (and somewhat jarring) as it is for me to admit, it seems that people simply do not have faith that a single human can accomplish much of anything, much less make the right decision, without some form of assistance from something metaphysical. This seems to be the rut society has fallen into, and it saddens me to an extreme extent to see this happen.

Let me pause here and say that this debate is much more serious than a simple question. Indeed, I find this question not only to be ridiculously stupid, but also downright insulting. The search for knowledge, of course, should always be supported, but to ask a question such as the implies that, due to my lack of a belief in God, and by extension, a lack of a belief that my "bad behavior" will be punished by someone I have never met and so far have no evidence of even existing, I am more susceptible to giving into the temptation to rape, pillage, plunder and murder. Just because I don't think someone is up there keeping track of every little bad thing I do doesn't mean I suddenly feel that I have free reign to steal as I please, harm as I please and discriminate as I please. In all honesty, I'm quite offended someone would think that just because I don't believe in God that I don't have compassion and empathy for my fellow humans.

God and morality are not mutually inclusive concepts. I will probably hear shouts of blasphemy after saying this, but the reason I didn't grow up to find myself in prison, or hated by a vast majority of the people I meet is not because God had any say in

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