"I'm a better person without religion"

From Godless mom:

I tried for quite a while, probably until I was just about 10, to make sense of the idea of an all loving god that was, by all the evidence presented to me, anything but. My parents encouraged me to go to religious studies in school so I would learn more about Christianity and had a choice, but the more I learned, the less convinced I was---and the older I got, the less my parents pretended they believed.

Finally, when most of my friends started doing their ‘confirmation’ at church, I decided that really, I could think of better uses of my time than go to church and recite things I did not believe in just because it was the done thing and everyone was doing it. I really couldn’t see a silver lining to it. 

I think it was one of my dad’s proudest moments when I told him I didn’t want to do it. He actually went so far as to tell me, traditionally you receive a cash gift once you completed confirmation and he was very proud that despite that I had chosen not to go through with it because I knew I didn’t believe in it. 

I was actually not being noble but was merely unaware there was a monetary reward associated with it but to be honest it didn’t really bother me. Not going to church still sounded a better reward!

...Today I’m happily and openly atheist. Sure, occasionally I have doubts. I’m a worrier. I constantly worry about horrible things happening so quite naturally once in a while the question: “What if I’m wrong and burn in hell?” does pop up in my brain.

But then I realize if there is an all loving god, he’ll love me anyway and if he’s more like the creationists describe him, I couldn’t in good conscience worship him anyway so I would go to hell all the same for not being devout enough and so, in the end, it really it makes no difference what I do as long as I’m a halfway decent person and not a psychopathic axe murderer.

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