A Brief History of Disbelief

I realize that I'm writing to cousins who are Christians and truly believe there is a supreme being. In this country you are all part of the vast majority of citizens who actually find it hard to understand how anyone like me could believe otherwise. Every community has a plethora of churches which spread the word of the gospel, of Jesus or Mohamad or even Buddha - although the latter two have never been thought to be supernatural. There are many channels on TV which also give say to religious leaders from the Pope to the 700 Club to even Dr. Schuler, to say nothing of the international crusades of Billy Graham. And most certainly, I'm not attempting to change anyone's beliefs, but to share with you the personal wonderment of having a belief of mine which has at last been acknowledged by the mass media - not the mass-mass media, of course, but rather some select PBS stations across the country. Last night I was privileged to watch on our local (Flagstaff) PBS the show, "A Brief History of Disbelief" by Jonathan Miller. http://tinyurl.com/yq8rtn (when there, be sure and download the "press release" of the show to get a good perspective of how the topic is treated. The show itself was interesting, but to me it was much more important in that it was the first time in my 76 years that any form of the mass media ever presented my own religious beliefs to the public in a documentary/historical or any other form. It provided an authenticity to concepts I have which has been expressed only in books and written publications - or on the Internet. My own skepticism of God 'came to me' one beautiful summer Sunday after church while playing alone in the dirt with my toy cars and trucks. It was 1937, I was six. My paternal grandfather had died the year before in Wisconsin and we went from Montana by train to his funeral. That was my first view of human death. It was also the year my father decided after nine years, he didn't want to be married to my mother anymore and told her so after the funeral on the station platform as we were boarding to return to Montana - in my presence. My mother was blindsided and devastated! Our Presbyterian minister had sermonized against 'fallen' divorced women a few Sundays before my 'revelation'. His tirade not only angered me, but caused me to realize that neither he, my parents, nor anyone else I knew, except perhaps Grandpa, were to ever be believed without question - not because they were malicious, they weren't - they were simply ignorant! It was up to me to learn my own 'truths'. Perhaps I was too young to have been indoctrinated into having faith in a Faith, yet I was certainly old enough to learn through experience not to have faith in any human - sometimes, even myself... There has always been a large part of me wherein I have been an ‘island' in that I have always been on the outside looking in - not socially, but intellectually. But with the current contest between the separation of church and state - and now, with the PBS show, I feel the door opening to Dunne's view that: "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." http://tinyurl.com/39cfgr