We're proud to bring you this exclusive excerpt from the new runaway best-selling non-fiction title, "Chicken Soup For The Atheist Soul". It's quite a coup for us here at LowGenius.Net to be allowed to reproduce the entire introduction by Jesus of Nazareth in its entirety. We hope you enjoy it.

Prefatory Matters

Hi, I'm Jesus of Nazareth. You may remember me from such notable historical moments as 'The Sermon On The Mount,' 'The Crucifixion,' and 'The Ascension.' The Ascension is my favorite. You should have seen the look on Mary Magdalene's face...

I digress. I've been asked to write an introduction to this book, Chicken Soup for the Atheist Soul. I suppose that they asked me as some kind of ironic statement on the wrongness of Atheism. Unfortunately for the publishers, however, I don't intend to make a statement like that because well...

I'm an Atheist.

I don't believe in God.

Belief

"What's that?!" I can hear you thinking now. No, seriously, I can hear you thinking now, "Wha...how can you not believe in God? He was your father! You wouldn't be here if not for God!"

Well, we'll get to that in a minute, but first I want to tell you about a few things I do and don't believe in.

I don't believe in Frederick Nietzsche. He didn't exist. I made him up just to screw with your heads. Hey, don't give me that look. Do you know how BORING it gets when you're immortal?

I believe in Penn Jillette, one of the authors of this book. I can see him, hear him, smell him (no, really, that guy needs some Right Guard), touch him. He is right there in front of me, and undeniably so. So I believe in him.

 Teller, his partner, I don't believe in. He's never spoken to me directly, and I can't touch him - every time I try he moves out of the way. Therefore I see no reason to think he's real. I think he's a cleverly-constructed projection of laser lights, controlled by Penn.

I believe in music. Oh, and I believe in love. People who believe in music are the happiest people I've ever seen...

I believe in Beatles.

I do not, however, believe in Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. In fact, I don't believe that the Phillipines existed between 1958 and 1986. Come to think of it, I shall now make it certain. They didn't. Who says so? I say so. What are you going to do about it, argue with me? Sue? Stop me? I'm Jesus. Deal with it, they're gone. Or they were for for 28 years.

I suppose the pedants and nitpickers among you will be wailing and gnashing your teeth (I always loved that imagery) over the notion of writing a book for something that, in theory, doesn't exist. "Jesus," you're saying, "they're atheists. They don't believe they have souls!" Well, they're wrong and so are you. Eddie Vedder is an atheist, so I'm told. Have you ever seen that dude sing? He's GOT soul. Kurt Vonnegut? Zappa? The guys from Pink Floyd? George Carlin? Billy Joel? Okay, so 'We Didn't Start The Fire' was crap, but you can't possibly listen to 'Piano Man' and believe that Billy Joel has no soul.

So don't split hairs with me. They have souls, and that's what this book is all about.

***

Of Gods And Men

So how does JESUS, SON OF GOD, MEMBER OF THE HOLY TRINITY not believe in God?

Well, it's simple.

God is a myth, crafted in the image of man, manipulated by men to their own ends and purposes. God is a crutch used by the weak-minded to justify the actions and beliefs that they know in their hearts to be misguided, hateful, wrong, or just plain evil.

What kind of omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent being would endorse hating someone just because they're gay, or black, or don't believe in omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent beings? What sort of God would tell his followers to go kill anybody who doesn't believe, or even reward them in Heaven for it? "God" a pissant excuse to be a jerk, or even to be a murderer.

I don't believe in that.

According to the last couple of thousand years, since I went on vacation, God has been responsible for torture, rape, murder, war, hate, destruction, genocide, lies, the stifling of science, the subjugation of women to the will of men, the enslavement of blacks, the eradication of the Native American population. God says you can't have sex, but if you do you can't use a condom. Apparently God likes the results of that - abortions, AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, multi-generational poverty, the spread of disease, and ultimately the evisceration of the human spirit.

I don't believe in any of that.

God told Pat Robertson to run for President; God told you to give Oral Roberts nine million dollars or poor old Oral would be 'called home.' Fine, I say. Send him home and put that nine million dollars into doing something really "Christian." 

"Christian" means "Christ-like." As in, doing what I would do. I'm not sure what I would do with nine million dollars, but I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't use it to keep Oral Roberts around. Maybe I'd build some schools or feed some hungry people. I never really thought about it until just now. 

God wants you to hand your money over to scam artists so they can buy sports cars and build waterslides and air-conditioned doghouses to better spread His Word. God wants you to fork over your hard-earned cash so some fat bigot can shack up with a hooker in a hotel room.

I don't believe in any of that, either.

God told the residents of Salem to stone and press 'witches,' God told the English and French to invade the Arabic Peninsula, starting a stupid fight that continues to this day with no winner ever possible. God created sex organs just so you would be embarrassed and ashamed of them. God created the clitoris so that men could ignore it for millions of years, and when they finally did find it, they could cut it off in some parts of the world.

I don't believe in that stuff.

Also, God was apparently responsible for giving Milli Vanilli a Grammy award. If you ever needed a more obvious clue that God does not exist, that should have been it.

Now you look at all of that, and ask yourself: How could any sane human being believe in a God that does these things? Near as I can tell, Heinlein had it right: God was made in Man's images, and has the manners and morals of a four-year-old child.

An unruly one, at that.

So I don't believe in God.

I believe in my Dad. I can hardly avoid that. But my Dad isn't God. He can't be, because Dad's not a racist, homophobic, hate-mongering rapist who wants people to kill each other in His name or to force them to believe in Him.

When Dad started his little homonculus project, he gave his little creatures this thing called free will, so that they could do as they please; he gave them a conscience, so that they would be driven to do things that were right and good for themselves and their fellow homonculi.

This "God" thing...is just the opposite, as far as I can tell. "God" wants you to kill the infidel. "God" hates fags. "God" gave white europeans the license to take an entire continent, kill nearly all the people who were already there, and call it their own. "God" says hate what you fear, love what kills you, and fear what loves you. "God" wants you to be a fearful, timid, unimaginative, asexual, hate-filled robot, worshipping him without question, and if you're a good robot he'll give you money. God wants you to whine a lot and become a professional victim if someone suggests to you that maybe shoving your hypocritical, self-righteous bullshit down people's throats for a couple of weeks in December isn't the way to make a good impression; God wants you to buy lots of shiny things for My birthday and give them to yourselves while ignoring everything I taught you while I was here.

What kind of idiot would believe in that?

I sure don't. Not only that, but I want my damn presents back. How would you like it if I threw a birthday party for you and then gave all the presents to myself? That's just rude, man.

Omega

If you want to believe in a Creator, that's fine with me. That works with me. It might not be scientific and all, but I don't think it takes a lot of faith to look around and see a beautiful sunrise, a smile on the face of a child, or the heart of someone who loves you, and believe that there's some kind of beautiful intelligence behind this whole charade who wants us to be happy, to create, to love, to prosper, and to help others prosper.

That sounds a lot like my Dad. You want to talk about creation, He can do some CRAZY shit if you give him a week or so to get all obsessive-compulsive about an idea. And he's a nice guy. He wants everyone to love, respect, and care for each other. He's pretty laid back, and wants people to relax and think about how to make the world a happy place.

Nothing real mystical or magical about that, though. There's no flash and splash there, and certainly not a lot that will make people hand over their money or blindly follow you around for saying it. "Be happy. Love each other. Respect your planet. Don't hate." That sounds a lot like my Dad.

Funny thing, you know...my Dad sounds a lot like the collected wisdom of several epochs of human development.  Our "better nature" or "collective subconscious."  We're all just energy, you know.  Even consciousness is just a result of energy moving in certain ways.  All of this is readily explained by science...but for some people, "science" isn't magical or mystical enough; rather than making them feel special or "blessed" or "chosen," it often makes them feel a little dumb because not everyone is a scientist, and certainly not everyone is a physicist or other scientific specialist who really has a grasp of the mechanics which underlie the "miracle of Creation."

And that's okay, you know.  To each their own, I say, at least until you start pushing "your own" down other people's throats.  So if you want to believe in some deity, by all means feel free.  I don't judge.

But this "God" creature who has become so popular of late among a certain band of the ideological spectrum? The bigoted, petulant, arrogant, warmongering, hateful Great Punisher?  The Angry Almighty who craves your saccharine adoration for an hour a week and two special days a year, who will reward you with 72 raisins in eternity if you just blow up enough people who think of Him differently than you? The Bigoted Bookburner who wants you to protect your children from an 11 year old fictional myopic kid with a wand, or go beat up a bunch of gay people for 'offending' Him?

That guy doesn't exist. That guy's a myth, and an ugly, destructive one at that.

So I don't believe in God.

And neither should you.

Your buddy,
Jesus

PS: I hate chicken soup. I'd rather have a nice bagel.