God Is an Atheist: A Novella for Those Who Have Run Out of Time by N.Nosirrah

The premise of the book is basically in the title... though oddly enough when most people see me reading this they only see the words god and atheist and put the two together in whatever context they've associate those words with, which is kind of funny considering the subject matter of the book.
 
The book is about a guy who has a talk with god and finds out that god isn't religious. God doesn't see things through the moral systems society uses to explain or worship god, basically we created the ritual surrounding the concept of god because people are designed to believe in something, that is what makes us feel safe and in control, so we stories and then create how we feel about the stories and then go living our lives around the beliefs. But god doesn't believe in the belief, as he didn't create the belief, we did. It's not just religious people that are the believers though. Everyone who has a belief is a believer, so atheists are lumped together with the fundamentalists (appropriate) but it goes beyond religion. Politics, interests, likes/ dislikes, anything that distinguishes you as something apart, as an individual, does so because you believe that it does so. And you follow it because you believe it to be the best choice for you at the time. So eventually the point becomes that if you want to know god or truth, you have to know that you are nothing. And yet we can't be nothing because we are something.
 
The concept kind of reminded me of a documentary Monty Python did about the Life of Brian (called the Secret Life of Brian). Basically they were saying how they couldn't mock the basic beliefs of christianity so they just mocked the believers, and there's this one scene where Brian does something with his shoe and the crowd of people watching begin fighting over what the shoe's significance is and how they should bring it into their rituals of worship. And brian kind of rolls his eyes. Basically this book is underlining how we the people are the squabblers, making up beliefs as we go.
 
I just finished reading it about 15 minutes ago so I haven't really thought over the concepts in any depth, but its definitely an interesting read. There's a kind of inner monologue quality to how the information is presented, so you don't exactly get bored reading it, but there is substance to the words so while the writing style is light, it's not going to be a nothing read that you'll finish in half an hour (even though it's only 100 something pages). Yes you will have to think. The drawings kind of got on my nerves a bit... trying to play up the vonnegut -_- but it was good.