This is going to be a long diary. The first part will be about how I came to be an Atheist and the second section will discuss some of the differences between two major branches in Atheism the Ayn Rand Objectivism version and the more popular and common Humanism that I practice. If you don't care about my journey than feel free to skip below the fold...

All my life I've been working toward becoming an Atheist and it finally took in the early part of the new Millennium. My father was a strong and vocal Atheist and I always wondered how he could be so sure. I dabbled in Buddhism, Taoism and read a fair amount about Christianity. My favorite form of fiction has always been that which manages to blend religion and science fiction as the great author Roger Zelazny did so well. His two seminal works, Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness helped shaped my early philosophy as an adult and sent me on the road to learning more. Robert Heinlein also was an early and powerful force in creating my belief structure, but I ended up outgrowing him.

After Dad passed away suddenly in January 1999 I found myself adrift and missing my anchor. Dad and I were very close, doing lunch weekly for most of the previous decade. After my hearing loss, in 1996, Dad carried me at one of the lowest points in my life. After his influence suddenly disappeared from my life I found myself wanting to learn more about Dad's conviction. As I said, Dad was an Atheist and a card carrying member of the AHA. He had long before accepted that we are all one and done. There ain't no god; there ain't no afterlife; there's only this life then we're worm food.

Like many other people it was hard for me to make that leap and accept that truth because the fear of running out of time is strong. The survival instinct is powerful in all animals and the self-aware human animal knows the end is coming. Everywhere we turn, people are promising us life everlasting and eternal joy. Join the right religion and do something special and when you die there will be hoards of hot nubile virgins just waiting to do whatever you tell them. And of course for those who don't believe, there's that flaming pit of eternal agony waiting for you. It isn't easy being an Atheist we don't get much positive press and many of us still live in the closet afraid to come out to friends and family though in recent years it's becoming more common thanks to some positive marketing work by the AHA and writers like Richard Dawkins.

For me the final steps in accepting there is no god and that the universe is a purely natural phenomenon came from two sources. One was an article my sister found on how to view our death from a natural perspective. In short it eloquently stated that death is merely our prepaid admission to the wonderful ride we call life. If you don't buy the ticket, you can't ride the ride and eventually everyone has to turn that ticket in. The second was an article which had a purely natural explanation for the beginning of the Universe. One little random quantum fluctuation, under the right conditions and pop, 13+ billion years later, here I sit at my keyboard typing to all of you. Between those two formative articles as well as some other explorations plus my memories of conversations with and articles/magazines from Dad through the years I was finally able to put aside my dabbling with other religions and accept that I was an Atheist.

Edit: It turns out the article my sister sent me was actually from Dad (go figure) and she managed to dig it up and then find a link to it online. Isn't the Internet wonderful? So here's that first article on how to think about our purely natural and inevitable death.