For many years I have questioned why more half the population of Earth believe in a god, especially in the western world. In interest of being disgusted, I sat down this afternoon and watched Jesus Camp. Only sixteen minutes into the film, it was completely obvious to me. That’s when I paused it, and went to write this.
The opening speech in the film is more than reassuring. It’s good. Becky Fischer is a minister of Christianity, and teaches children. She says that we should fix the world. Just get up and fix it with our tools. So, Becky says to the children, “Get up everybody” and they do it. Then it all turns to chaos, as she says “Open your mouths and speak what the Holy Spirit whispers into your ears.” Now the children are either shouting indistinguisable words, shaking, moving forward and backwards, falling to the ground. It’s everybody, children in the age between five and thirteen, in the midst of chaos. It made me remember how Muslims and Buddhists pray.
The movies goes on. Now we see how these children are being taught – educated. “Levi, how would you like to go to a school were they said “Creationism is stupid, you are stupid if you believe it in.” Levi don’t like that. Nobody likes their beliefs to be ridiculed. But how did Levi obtain this opinion at the age of 12?
Like any child, he believed in what his mother or minister taught him. So the mother or minister told Levi, “evolutionism is false, creationism to right,” and Levi believed it. Levi didn’t go to school. As an atheist, I want a little ‘evidence’ or at least some sort of second-hand confirmation of this postulate. My mother never spoke of gods, because she doesn’t really believe in it, but I prayed when I was a child. I prayed to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit that the good cartoons would be on. Half the time, God payed attention and forfilled my wish, half the time he didn’t. I thought God was a bit naïve, because I kept telling him “I’ll never do a bad thing in my life if you do this little thing for me,” but when the cartoons came on, I forgot all about it. Nobody that I intended to believe told me that God actually existed. I was free to believe what I wanted without anyone telling me what to believe in. I learned about religion as the years came on, and I thought “That sounds like a nice thing.” All the happy people, the healing, the ten commandments and so on. At the age of 12 I believed that kindness was the path to a peaceful world. Be good to others, don’t lie, don’t steal, simply don’t go bad things. Unlike half the population of the world, I didn’t need any god to tell me that.
So I finally came to the conclusion. Don’t believe in what other people tell you, find out for yourself.
In a free fall toward the skies 