How then, can I take seriously any deity who needs to be worshiped?

Everywhere we look we see conceptions of an all-everything god — the supposed creator of our vast and complex universe — but who needs to be worshiped.

Does this make sense? I think not.

I am a finite fragile being, but I am still able to find happiness without praise from others. Does it makes sense that an infinite all-powerful god cannot do the same?

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic god’s need for worship is extremely ungodly. Such an entity needs competent therapy more than fawning worship.

The personal insufficiency of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god is sufficient reason to doubt his existence. He smacks more of primitive humanity than anything divine.

But the apologists are quick to inform me I have it backwards. They say we must worship their god for our own benefit, not his. Forgive my bluntness, but they are pulling this idea out of their assholes. It is not the message of their scriptures. Those scriptures are clear. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic god wants, needs, demands to be worshiped, or else.

Do I need to be worshiped? No. Do I need something to worship? No. I am sufficient without it.

I’ve taken to saying “Happy Sol Invictus Day.” I do it as an educational service. When people look confused I tell them to look it up, and then I walk away.

There is nothing holy about the holidays for me, not only because I am not religious, but because the “celebrations” are a severe interruption to the fun I have when there are no holidays.

I spend nearly every day adding meaning to my life by pursuing my purpose. The holidays interrupt my joy. I go from exercises designed to increase marginal utility, to activities of marginal futility. Eating food I’d prefer not to eat, drinking more than I prefer to drink, buying gifts people don’t really want, and receiving such gifts in return.

Everywhere I look people are grim and unhappy, standing in long lines, trapped in a social construct from which there seems to be no escape. The attempt to escape brings a social price that costs more than the value escape would bring.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am not a total Scrooge. I think Christmas is great for kids, and a source of joy also for parents. But for the rest of us, as far as I can tell from the way people behave, Christmas and the other holidays are mostly hell.

I’m glad they’re over for another year, so I can return to celebrating.

“Do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.”

The message is clear. The flesh is bad. This life is bad. Sex is bad. Only the afterlife is good, and this life we have now must be sacrificed to it. We must sacrifice what we have for what we do not have, and may never have. We must forsesake the joys we know for the sake of something that isn’t known, and which cannot be objectively verified.

And Paul is considered an oracle of virtue?

Why is it virtuous to believe things that are unsupported by evidence? Look at the history of the world. It is precisely those ideas that have lacked evidentiary support that have caused the most harm — Nazism, Communism, Islam . . . Christianity?

We are alive now. Let us live. Let us enjoy life, taking our pleasures in the balanced moderation that is necessary to the retention of the joys those pleasures provide. And let us please take no more pleasure in the words of those, who like the Apostle Paul, make baseless assertions about ultimate reality.

When I ask them why this is so the answer always boils down to this: life has no meaning if it is not followed by an afterlife. In other words, a life that ends is meaningless. But . . .

• Is intercourse that ends in orgasm meaningless?

• Is a novel you finish reading meaningless?

• Is a milk shake you suck dry meaningless?

If so, then why do you fuck, read novels, drink milk shakes, or do anything else that has a beginning and an end?

I’ve had so many conversations with Christians in which mortality is said to rob life of meaning. It seems to be a characteristic pathology of the religious mind. But this conception of meaning is clearly wrong, as evidenced by the indisputable fact that people who expect no afterlife go on living and smiling.

The meaning of life is simple. Life is given meaning by anything you experience that makes suicide an inferior option.

It gives meaning to my life to point out how many Christians live their lives by a double standard. They do not treat others as they themselves want to be treated.

It gives purpose to my life to convince religious people to abandon their nihlistic moral relativism, and start judging their own beliefs by the same standards they use to judge the beliefs of others. Of course, if Christians were to do this, Christianity would disappear.