God is a human creation. Not only that but he is the greatest masterpiece that humanity has ever painted, weaved, sculpted and installed. It is a testament to not to one, twelve, a hundred or even a thousand, but millions upon millions of artistisans who have dedicated their lives and the lives of their children to a single brushstroke in an epic exhibition of history, histrionics; humanity and hunger.

I do not know who created God but I do know who continues to sanctify God. And those who sanctify him wish to recreate themselves in his image. But a person cannot be God, because God was never a person.

God is a populace.
God is a collective conscious.
God is literature.
God is art.

God is born of all our souls and all our hearts, but especially all our hands. He is part of me and every part of you. I am neither clever nor patient enough to peruse the library that holds every thought, every hunch, every theory, every paean and every attack on God, but selfishly, I wish to add my own thoughts to the library before they expire and melt away on balsamic parchment.

God is the most medieval torture and God is the purest of pleasures.

The pleasure derives from the simple fact that God means that we do not matter. The institution of religion is based almost solely on the terms of consolation and guilt. We are sorry we are such talent less, unlearned and despicable human beings. We hate ourselves, our arms, our legs, our anatomy, and every atom and every quarter-inch of an atom of what is contained within it. Every foregone possibility in the creation process is the bane of our existence – a not only annoying but horrendously painful suckling sore.

Remember all the books you read as a child? They told you so many things. Taught you so many things. They taught you that humanity was essentially evil. That we were all bad. That we were base, primitive and positively unforgivable. That, given the a desperate enough consequence we would tear each other’s clothes off, returning not to Adam and Eve but to a much darker, a much more dreadful innocence. We would eat other’s livers and chant things and sharpen sticks on both sides. We would let our cupped hands fill with our bother’s blood and our mouths with our sister’s membrane. Our mothers and fathers lost already. Taken early because of their age and perceived weakness.

Wars, genocide and the civilisation in general are all a testament to this. Common hatred. Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Intolerance. Ignorance. All the spit that fills and festers in every sewered artery in every cesspit heart in every body. No wonder we are so ashamed. We are nothing but hate mongers. Hate with limbs. Each particle of goodness in our frames is instantly overwhelmed and taken siege by any one speck of hate. It is a double standard we must not allow ourselves to ignore.

But with God we do not matter. How relieved our heartstrings! Organs begin to pump again, but with a higher purpose. With God we have moulded and continue to mould a vision of perfection. (You may be inclined to believe that the Greeks were different. And they were. Their Gods were not perfect because they acknowledged humanity’s innate corruption.) And we have decided that the standard of perfection shall be unattainable to the regular citizen. Perfection is God’s place and we cannot make our homes there. So why try? Why look in a mirror if you have already seen the whitest and most beautiful apparition. Why look into your own heart, your own soul and your own eyes when you have already broken the heart, captured the soul and watered the eyes of someone or something so much greater. Why better ourselves when we can better an ideal.

Some say that God is their reason for change. The reason some people love their wives with a precise determination. The reason children who can barely stand, kneel. The reason some people see beyond themselves and beyond now with a mature and patronising perspective. But it that is superficial. Like I have said before: every breath a single person takes in a moment of hate or darkness asphyxiates the love and light of billions. This is the standard upon which we must measure ourselves if we believe in our shameful origins and the existence of a God. Nothing I have seen in my mother, my father or my closest friends has enabled me to forget some of the things I have seen in the news or even in the eyes of the people I know.

I have said much but all I meant to say is:

God is cleansing.
God is forgiveness.
God is the only love and the only white that can overwhelm our hate and our dark.

So we do not matter. Our hate, our intolerance, our ancient stupidity is no match for our God. This is a sin. And it is alive. As time, and our belief in God continues, we will allow ourselves to become more wicked by recreating God to be greater and purer still. Thus, though I do not believe that we are innately animalistic on any more than an evolutionary manner, I do believe that our instance on a single God is swiftly converting us into something conniving and sinister.

The torture derives from insecurity. Not everyone believes in God. And even those who do may not believe in your particular God. So who are you to stand so vigilantly upon a stage and act so confidently and convincingly in a theatre that you yourself do not own. A believer could be tortured with their own faith or the faithlessness of others, depending on their level of tenacity to God. Either way, uncertainty and lack of understanding encourages separation; the centre and the periphery, and delineation; fact and fiction. It causes large fractions that pry open and rip from the seems the already fissure ridden cloth that covers humanity. It destroys the already threatened unity of our species.

But there is a cure. Consider this: because we created God we must have the ability to destroy him. I should have warned you that this was to be no practical cure. When did life begin? God began at this time. When will life end? God will end at that time. Is it our purpose, as an unending double helix of lineages, to create and eventually destroy God? Is life but a process of indulgence and purgery?

I have also read books that told of God in a noble way. God is the better story. God is humanity rising above itself. God is answer to an otherwise dull and ugly existence. Even if he is a mere, extensive fabrication we should be commended. It is concrete proof that we can be, and are, something more and something better because we seek something more and something better and are able to create the means in which the fulfilment may be quenched. I do not disagree with this. I do not disagree with the fact that the world can be a beautiful place, or with the fact that some people are very easy to love. I cannot say that I have not laughed or sung or slept soundly. But I can say that I have hated and I have screamed and I have killed. And continue to do so. And so do you. And this I cannot forgive. Even though I personally do not believe in a God, I see through the same eyes as someone who may. I see so much ugliness. But I do not see a God. I do not see the gleam that cleans our bloody messes with a simple omnipresence. Instead I see a world in denial. I see me as a self-loathing, hypocritical, flippant, hateful and indecisive piece of work. Who created this monster? Was it I? Or was it you and your God?

I, like millions, are suitably ashamed of myself and my own pathetic prejudices. In a few days (hours, even) I will be ashamed of these every words that I have written. I want to cry but sentimentality sickens me. There is no one to blame but everyone.

We must lose our origins and dependence on God, even as atheists, if only in our individual minds. We must become the new men and the new women.