Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
Comfort. hm. Well, I suppose it’s comfort in the sense that you no longer have a con artist beating you with the shame stick.
Complete agreement. I find it far more comforting to think that the world is governed by materialistic physical processes which we can understand and manipulate than to believe that it’s in the hands of a being who is, at best, callously indifferent to human suffering, and at worst, actively malevolent.
If a lightbulb burns out in a Catholic’s house, the owner will ask, “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” Not only does a lack of religion allow us to understand what causes suffering, it allows us to prevent future occurrences of it, and also to bring instances to an end by changing the metaphorical lightbulb instead of sitting there sulking in the dark.