You were one sperm cell away from not existing.

I finished the book that I was borrowing, The God Delusion, this weekend while sitting in an apartment building in Philly waiting for people to wake up and get things rollin' for the day. It is quite an extraordinary book and I am ridiculously pleased to find someone of such credibility and knowledge (such as Richard Dawkins) that writes about views and idea's that I've had since I was very young. The problem with being "young" and having ideas and notions of atheism is that there seems to be no one around you with similar thoughts. My parents never seemed highly religious, but my parents families were/are, particularly my mums side. I don't know if she took me, my sister, and my brother to church because it's something she believed in and wanted us to believe, or because her older sisters expected it of her. Either way, we only really went for the 'major' Christian holidays: Easter and Christmas Eve.
My point is, whether or not my parents are the kind to be duped into believing in a 'God,' they never really forced their ideas or beliefs on to me and my siblings. I thank my parents very much for this, for I think it gave me a much more unbiased view of religion and allowed me to make my own conclusion's about what I believe. Or don't, for that matter. My parents didn't force feed me their ideas, they taught me critical thinking - the ability to lay out the facts, put them together logically, and make my own conclusions.
I asked the boy a couple days ago, "How different do you think the world would have been if there hadn't been religion?" We had a difficult time imagining such a place. Think, for a moment, of the Earths history. Think of an event. Now is religion attached to it somehow? It's very difficult to come up with a war, a conflict, a movement, an oppression, compositions, buildings, an invasion, almost any event that occurred before the 1800 or 1900's that wasn't influenced by religion. It's revolting. My best guess for what may have happened if there had not been religion was that science, literature, music, art would have all been free to progress quickly and unhindered. It's 2008 and George W. Bush does not want research on stem cells to continue because it is against his religion. 2008!!!!!! There is something wrong with that. I am not religious, and if the stem cell research of today could save my life in the future, I want that technology to be available, not suppressed by an idiot that believes in fairytales.
To move on, if there had been no God, no religion, no anything of that sort, wouldn't people have felt a void? Do simple minded people need a God to feel like they have a purpose and that someone is watching out for them, caring for them? Does God give people's lives meaning? Do people need Him? I thoroughly enjoyed Dawkins view on the matter:

"There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and a point. It is all a piece with the infantilism of those who, the moment they twist their ankle, look around for someone to sue. Somebody else must be responsible for my well-being, and somebody else must be to blame if I am hurt. Is it a similar infantilism that really lies behind the 'need' for a God?...
"The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed. If science gives consolation of a non-material kind, it merges into my final topic, inspiration."

From there he does indeed discuss what should be our inspiration. Not the 'awesomeness' of God nor the desire to go on to a heaven when we die. It's basically the Carpe Diem mentality. He uses rhetoric to make his point: out of the potentially trillions of people that could have been born other than you, you were born and here today. Of the hundreds of thousands of eggs that women produce and the millions of sperm that men produce, the chances of YOU being on earth were very very poor in favor. If your mother had not been impregnated by your father on that day and with that particular sperm cell, you would not be here. It is a very difficult idea to wrap your head around, but sit and think about it good and hard for a minute and the realization that you were a sperm cell away from not being here is very gratifying.
It truly is science, and not God, that is awesome.
Please check out the link for The God Delusion for any more info. As I've stated, I'm now finished with the book so will probably cease to write on this topic for a while. Until another book like this comes along, of course.