Atheism
Atheism is a person's belief that there is proof of the non-existence of all deities (while also insisting that they would not be All That even if they existed). Atheists oppose monotheism and polytheism, as even a single deity would refute Atheism. Atheists' main belief in life is that there are absolutely no absolutes. Since Atheists believe there is no afterlife ruled by a bearded old man with sacred powers, they believe they can do whatever they want in their life on Earth, and get away with it. Atheism stands out for its lack of scriptures, rituals, prophets, and other sacred paraphernalia—except when the legislature votes to put up a Christmas tree outside the State House and Atheists want something of their own. In that case, a bunch of dead twigs usually suffices.
Atheism is the youngest and least recorded religion. It grew in importance only as science devised explanations for things such as heat lightning, earthquakes, and O.J. Simpson, and theists began to feel it was less urgent to clasp their hands and pray to the Bearded Man that they would be better thralls if these things would stop happening.
Atheism has become more popular in the 21st Century. Its popularity is likely to grow steadily as the Apocalypse approaches, mostly because if Jehovah arrives and announces he is going to choose 144 survivors, it will be entertaining to see Atheists grovel and feel like chumps.
After decades of receiving little to no attention from academia, Atheism has finally caught the interest of modern archeologists, who have deemed it boring enough to be worthy of prolonged study.
Origins
Reginald "Sparky" Wharton III
Modern astrologists attribute the origins of Atheism to Reginald "Sparky" Wharton III (1911-????), who, after twenty-five years of unsuccessfully praying for a New York City rent-stabilized apartment, publicly uttered his now famous words, "Fuck This", words which were to form the basis of the Atheist credo until Wharton's death two weeks later.
Wharton, struck by lightning while throwing rocks at children in Central Park, left virtually no documentation of his religious ideology: his only remaining belongings were two packets of ketchup and some illegible scribbles on a Burger King receipt. Wharton is said to have been cremated in Gunfire Creek, New Jersey, though neighbors claim his body was buried "somewhere out west". This allegation is further confused by the testimony of Geraldine Chan, Wharton's personal seamstress and joint proprietor of Hunan Happy Cleaner, Inc., who claimed in a 1974 interview that "Me no know him well, but pretty sure he bring two stained shirt and golf-style pants the Wednesday after police say he dead, so me no know much if report was right. But me think he a Atheist, ha ha."
Further doubt about Wharton's death was cast by the 1977 testimony of California grave robbers Pedro Antonio Lopez-Gonzalez-Torres and Juan Generico Perez-Caramba, who were apprehended in Amarillo, Texas for urinating on private property. While under police custody, they confessed, among other things, to have opened Wharton's casket a few months before their arrest, only to find "no bodily remains -- just a couple of packets of ketchup, and a pillar of salt".
Lopez-Gonzalez-Torres' and Perez-Caramba's testimony was dismissed as unconstitutional by the Armadillo County District Court of Appellations upon the discovery that their confessions had been extracted at gunpoint by police officer Rodney King, who made Lopez-Gonzalez-Torres confess to several crimes, including the murder of John F. Kennedy. However, the charges against the police department were dropped when the Armadillo County Bureau of Infinite Justice showed Lopez-Gonzalez-Torres and Perez-Caramba to be Russian illegal aliens, thereby rendering their testimony void and bringing to doubt their belief in Christ.
No further testimony was obtained from L-G-T and P-C, who were promptly executed by firing squad in the summer of 1978, shortly before the Armadillo County Court of Counter Appeals found them to be innocent.
Most Atheists deny that Wharton ever existed, citing insufficient tangible evidence.
Jeremiah "Sparky" Chomsky
The legacy of Atheism was continued by the now-forgotten Austrian window-dresser Jeremiah "Sparky" Chomsky (????-1977), who independently invented Atheism at approximately the same time as Wharton.
Chomsky, a staunch Atheist, categorically denied the existence of God and stubbornly refused to acknowledge any sort of supernatural event, despite having been reputedly approached by talking, spontaneously-combusting specimens of plant life on at least five different occasions in the summer of 1967 (the "Summer of Love"), and various other times in the years following. After encountering a talking serpent during a hiking trip in downtown London, he wrote in his only surviving journal: "'Twas the freakiest thing I ever did see, a fluke of Evolution, or perhaps a side-effect of bodily fatigue, yet not unlike in its wonder to the burning sculpture of the Virgin that confronted me last week during my visit to the Aquarium. Nature is indeed a remarkable force."
Plagued by apparitions, Chomsky died of natural causes after being attacked by a flock of ravens while repairing the hot water heater in the basement of his beach house in Cancun, Mexico.
Beliefs
Atheists live by the Atheist motto "No God, nowhere, regardless, period, except for the Flying Spaghetti Monster of course," though most state this view using different wording. When confronted with questions regarding the Creation of Man, Atheists adhere to the fundamentalist theories provided by their god's only begotten son, Richard Dawkins, who claims that the Earth was created accidentally by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a non-supernatural huge random super-explosion. The theory states that this explosion was brought about by The Flying Spaghetti Monster, who doesn't exist of course. Modern archaeologists dismiss this theory as "preposterous and unamerican".
A few Atheists, however, hold incompatible beliefs. Celebrity boxer and theologian Mike Tyson, for example, said in an interview with Oprah that many Atheists do in fact believe in the story of Richard Dawkins, "so long as God isn't involved." Tyson is notable in that he is not only an Atheist cardinal, but also an athlete.
This Richard Dawkins doctrine states:
| “ | Amongst ye chosen peoples, empirics, by No One In Particular, thou shalt forever refrain from organizing brethren in any purposes involving intent to worship or give thanks to the savior of all man, No One In Particular. Empirics with to do in any such togethering will be irrevocably banished, utterly rejected and forsaken by No One In Particular and condemned to spend all his remaining consciousness in the festering torture of Nowhere in Particular. (Hawking 3:22) | ” |
Atheist majority countries
France is one, so is Russia and all of Eastern Europe (Soviet bloc), a few Scandinavian countries and pretty much the whole European continent. Atheism is catching up in Canada, Australia and Japan, any other free democratic industrial/developed country except America.
Atheist practices
Rituals
Though Atheist rituals vary widely by geographical location, they show a distinct pattern: meals are never preceded by any form of prayer, and the exterior of Atheist households is never adorned by anything that can be construed as a Holy Apparatus. All activities are conducted in a way that modern astronomers have referred to as "objectively heathen". National Geographic notes that Atheists seem particularly fond of tourism.
On weekends, Atheists often partake in rituals such as shopping, catching up with chores, and sitting around. These practices are often conducted in athletic wear, notably sweat pants, especially in South America. The question of circumcision is highly disputed among Atheist sects, and its practice varies widely depending on how convincing the surgeon was and whether the parents can afford it.
Religious garb
Though casual Atheists are virtually indistinguishable from God's people in terms of their appearance, the more active cult members (orthodox Atheists), particularly those who practice tourism, show a predilection for topless nudity. These topless travelers tend to stay away from popular vacation hot-spots, and prefer to make pilgrimages to less-frequented haunts such as the Amazon Jungle or the Arctic Ocean.
Though Atheists are by far the most common practitioners of topless tourism, God's children shouldn't be too quick to assume that all bare-breasted women are Atheists: while many of those found on the beaches of the Mediterranean are from a sect of Atheists known as Protestants, a substantial number of them are harmless, God-fearing Germans.
Normal folk are sometimes confused by Atheists who paradoxically wear religious emblems like the crucifix or the American flag. While some Atheists do in fact wear crucifixes, they normally do so for purely sacrilegious purposes and in acknowledgement of other Atheists such as Marilyn Manson and Christina Aguilera, as opposed to the more ceremonial use of the crucifix by pop celebrities such as the Pope and David Beckham.
Atheism in the media
In 1982, the government-sponsored shockumentary An Unbiased View of Those on the Wrong Path declared Atheism to be "a disturbingly well-organized religious cult, with congregations and priests that mimic and mock those of our good people." The renowned documentary's most shocking scene showed a religious ceremony lead by a priest in a Lacrosse shirt and bell-bottoms mumbling words in an obscure tongue to an audience of naked prepubescent children. The scene was shot in what appeared to be a dreary, dark cellar. The documentary caused an uproar throughout the world that lead to the U.S. invasion of several Central American countries.
In the 1990s, however, a shockumentary by the Discovery Channel showed An Unbiased View to have used questionable methods of reporting that were a possible breach of the rules of journalism set forth by the Geneva Convention. The Discovery Channel hired prominent scientologists, most of whom were translators, to show that the previous documentary was nothing but a misunderstanding. The supposed gathering in a gloomy, dark basement was in fact filmed during daylight hours in a park in Sweden. Further scrutiny displayed that the obscure tongue spoken by the High Priest was actually Swedish, and that the alleged naked cultists were nothing more than Scandinavian children on a nudist field trip. Shortly after this discovery, U.S. Religious Leader George Bush Senior issued a formal apology to the government of Nicaragua, "even though you have to admit you're better off than before the invasion", and proceeded to bomb Iraq instead, out of principle.
Atheism and the Law
“Alright fine, so maybe a quarter of the country is non-religious and if they were represented proportionately in politics there’d be about a hundred atheist or agnostic congress people, but outside of that atheists have it just as good as anyone else. I mean, I suppose we do give Sikh soldiers haircut and beard waivers in the military, and a Jain, Hindu, Buddhist or Seventh Day Adventist medic wouldn’t have to eat meat rationsor learn surgery on half blown up farm animals... and I suppose we don’t really allow atheist chaplains that would espouse secular philosophers instead of a religion either because than we'd have to define who is an acceptable philosopher or end up with a bunch of people getting paid to quote Bruce Lee or Ayn Rand. But you know other than politics and the military atheists aren’t really treated any differently…except rescheduling University exams for religious holidays…ok so maybe it's more like 5 things...you really aren't buying this are you?”
The practice of Atheism is legal throughout most of the world, with the exceptions of China (unless it's the state Atheism with Mao as its god), North Korea (with Kim Jung Il in his "cult of personality"), the Muslim countries, Singapore, and the United States of America. In another blatant attempt to suck up to the American government, Great Britain has expressed intentions to outlaw Atheism.
The treatment of Atheist suspects varies among the Muslim countries. In less tolerant nations such as Saudi Arabia, Atheism is punishable by flogging or decapitation, depending on how devout the suspect is, whereas in more lenient, progressive nations such as Syria, Atheism is largely overlooked when the suspects are male, but female suspects are punished by publicly urinating on them and then stoning them to death.
In Singapore punishment ranges from a two thousand dollar fine to death by electric chair, a policy similar to that of the state of Texas in the U.S. They began to ponder the use of ovens and gas showers.
But the left-leaning state of California prides itself as a religious colony for persecuted Atheists, along with Gays, scientologists and Marxists seem to congregate in San Francisco.
Controversy
In recent times, the cult has been the subject of heated controversy. Government sources have shown links between Atheism and homosexuality, pedophilia, and communism. Communities throughout the world have expressed a growing concern as an increasing number of role models such as Mike Tyson and Pat Robertson are exposed as practicing Atheists. The first prominent religious figure to address the Atheist Problem was Christian spokesman George W. Bush, who described Atheists as "a real threat in America, including to the rest of the world", and attributed the danger of Atheism to the fact that "you can't really tell them apart from regular folk. They're so hidden, so undercover, you could say they're almost indivisible."