Oh, god, not again...

In the past few months I've faced some tough decisions. I know I'll be faced with more. But at the end of the day, I find the randomness of a godless existence much less troubling than the alternative. TO and I have survived several family tragedies together. At the time, as believers, we really had to fight feelings of guilt. Maybe we didn't pray hard enough. Maybe our mezuzot were pasul. Etc, etc. Now, looking back, I feel free of that. My actions had no bearing on these events, and neither did my husband's. So even though I may at times feel rudderless, bad things that happen to me are either due to my own mistakes or chance. Not the vengeance of a temperamental, cruel god. So too with evil on a greater scale, from wars to natural disasters.

I think that the concept of "tzadik v'ra lo" is one of the main things that makes me glad to be a skeptic. I never minded keeping most of the laws -- while I believed, the sacrifice was not too great. But now, I've judged God more harshly than I did in the past. Bottom line is, if this is what God is like, I don't believe in Him. So why should I listen to him?

Of course, there are other proofs that point to there being no god, and specifically that the Jewish god does not exist. But I don't feel the need to go into them right now. There isn't much concrete evidence, and there are logical proofs for and against. I don't have any really interesting reasons to be an atheist. But I think it's interesting that, less than two years after my first skeptical thought, I pretty much am one. And that it's so liberating. It really wipes so much of the guilt. It doesn't automatically point to hedonism. I'm much too busy for that. But it makes life simpler overall, and that's good for me.