by Scott Kaelen
I’m proud to have gravitated towards such great and positively inspirational individuals.
A deeper question comes to mind though: when was the seed of the atheism onion sewn, and by whom? Towards what are the non-believers of the world being drawn?
TO BELIEVE OR NOT TO BELIEVE?
If it were scientifically proven tomorrow that God’s true name is Geoff, and that he comes from a gas giant called Pffffff-twib in the Tadpole Galaxy, I would accept that Geoff of Pffffff-twib does indeed exist, but I would still say he doesn’t deserve to be venerated as a god. I’d have a game of cards with Geoff, but the moment he so much as hinted at me worshipping him, I’d slap him across his big gas-giant-alien-god face with a rotting tuna.
You see, it’s not the “belief” part that I have the biggest problem with, it’s the “worship” part. Whether it’s gods, dragons, aliens, time-travelling dinosaurs, a troupe of tap-dancing tooth fairies, the sentient heart of a galaxy covertly disguised as Moses’ posing pouch, or a zombified Belsnickel carrying a sack made from Santa’s face and driving an invisible DeLorean, there’s not a single entity in the whole of existence – real, scientifically theoretical or fantastically imagined – that is worthy of worship. Respect, yes. Fear, possibly. Even love. But never worship. You wouldn’t stroke Geoff of Pffffff-twib’s ego, would you? So why stroke God’s?
I consider prayer and worship to be abhorrent practices, utterly unworthy of being considered by any rational creature, let alone of being embraced by such a creature. Most people who believe in a cosmic engineer – one with grand plans for each of us – embrace their beliefs for one reason only: because the idea of finite existence, of mortality, instils in them a paralysing fear. Most theists, of course, and indeed many deists, will never admit this because they are scarcely aware of it on a conscious level. The fear is too primal. But if their religion or philosophy was pulled out from under their feet, discarded, proven to be nothing but wishful thinking, what then would the theists and deists do? Where would they turn?
As an atheist, I do not believe in an afterlife. I don’t believe there is a universal sculptor hidden away in an obscure dimension within the vast tapestry of galaxies.
I do believe that when individuals achieve or create something, they should give the credit for their achievements and creations wholly to themselves and to any other animate or inanimate objects that directly or indirectly helped them to achieve their success; Christians can give inspirational credit to their god, but please stop giving creational credit to him for everything beneath and beyond the Sun.
I also believe that the universe has a pattern; there’s no denying that, just as there is no denying DNA has a pattern. The billions of light years of known universe have been proven to follow complex laws of nature, gravity, and quantum and spatial mechanics, but that in no way points to one or more entities being responsible for existence.
Aristotle believed in such a cosmic engineer, which he called the Prime Mover. Deists generally hold similar Aristotlean beliefs. Such philosophies are harmless as long as they don’t mutate into an organised religion, because that’s where the danger begins, along with the oppression of individuals within that belief system (usually and predominantly women) and the bigotry against those who don’t hold the same beliefs.
Don’t get me wrong. The prospect of there being no afterlife absolutely terrifies me. And yet despite this I still refuse to acknowledge the claims of any extant or extinct religions as legitimate models of existence. What I do accept is that existence very likely contains entities which are as great as or greater than the deities imagined by humanity. I accept this because of a simple inarguable law: a near-infinite existence must allow near-infinitely likely chances of such beings existing within such limitations.
This is not to say I believe such entities have got anything to do with Earth or humanity. To presume as much is the height of arrogance, but an arrogance born of fear and necessity, to ancient Man who knew no better.
As someone who believes that when he dies he is just going to stop existing, I live in mortal fear of the inevitability of my own death; this is similar to the fear of mortality that is ingrained into each and every theist’s deepest neurological pathways, but rather than being rooted in my subconscious it is at the very forefront of my thoughts. When I look upon the stars and planets and galaxies and distant quasars and all the building blocks of the cosmos, it humbles me. There is real beauty out there, cold and heartless as it may be, but it is beauty none the less.
Christopher Hitchens – one of my greatest modern-day inspirations – hated the idea of life everlasting. He seemed to have embraced his mortality. To choose non-existence over eternal consciousness seems crazy to me, but with my head and heart firmly wedged into the corner of logic, reason and scientific methodology, I have no choice but to prescribe to my brief moments of consciousness leading all too soon to a state that is the equivalent of never having existed at all. It’s horrible, and yet there is absolutely zero evidence or even as much as a cryptic hint that any conscious being stands the remotest chance of immortality. It’s a lovely thought that it could happen, but it’s also crazy talk.
If you offered me the ability to become eternal, either physically or incorporeally, and if you could prove to me through nature or technology that it absolutely worked, I would accept your offer, both gladly and with the utmost relief. Of course, I don’t doubt I would regret that choice further down the line, say, after so many thousands of years of seeing too many loved ones die, who hadn’t been offered to sip from the same golden chalice.
If you showed me no evidence, but told me I had to believe in a deity in order for eternal life to work, I’d shake my head and walk away.
A more frightening third option might be you proving to me through scientific methodology that I could become eternal, but you added a clause that said I must believe in and worship and pray to an entity that demanded my devotion, both in this life and the hypothetical afterlife. In that case, I would accept the afterlife and the clause, in the same way we all click on ‘Accept’ in the terms and conditions of anything we want to join nowadays. I would enter the afterlife in full knowledge that I had no intention of worshipping or praying to any entity whatsoever. Oh, I would believe they existed as soon as it was proven to me, and no doubt I would respect them. But worship? Never.
This is what separates belief in a higher power from the acceptance of religious doctrines. But I don’t prescribe to faith, therefore I can not accept the existence of something without evidence. That’s my logic and reason talking.
Here are some other things I don’t prescribe to:
• Forced genital mutilation of children and adults who do not wish it, or who have not been given the chance to explore the reasons why such a vile practice happens.
• Persistent brainwashing of children and adults into agreeing with and prescribing to religious doctrines.
• Murder, torment or oppression of those who have a different belief system, or who have none at all.
• Social stagnation due to being held back by the allowances of religious teachings and beliefs.
• Social inequality of class, gender and race due to zealous enforcement of religion.
The list goes on.
This isn’t just my logic and reason talking, it’s the fact that I’m neither brainwashed nor bondaged by a skewed set of religious laws, nor am I using religion as an excuse to commit heinous acts on other humans or on animals, nor am I afraid of progress, evolution, or the forwarding of humanity to the point where religion disappears in a cosmic dust cloud.
Don’t misunderstand me; appreciating your fellow humans is extrinsic to believing in a higher power. More so, it is extrinsic to worshipping that higher power and living your life by following a book that has changed over four and a half thousand years to mean pretty much whatever its followers want it to mean.
Showing decency and courtesy to people can be done without religion. In fact,
it has more chance to be honestly done when not imposed by religion. Religion is a vestigial illness of the mind, an unfortunate and lingering remnant waiting to be cast aside. If religion is ever dissolved, it will leave an indelible mark on humanity, like the coccyx bone – a reminder of a primal time of confusion, fear and violence; the hallmarks of an emerging species still in its infancy, whose arrogance and self-aggrandizement may never allow it the chance to fully evolve, and will likely lead to its demise.
When a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear it, it still makes a sound. When a god-fearing species becomes extinct, when its sun consumes its planet, when the stars and galaxies fade over hundreds of trillions of years until all matter and energy in the universe fades away, will Judaism, Christianity or Islam have any relevance? Will Zeus, Odin, Osiris or Yahweh, Mbombo, Coatlicue, Marduk, Brahman, Allah or God still exist? Of course not, because they never did exist. The building blocks of cosmic existence don’t care a jot about any piffling gods or their religions. The universe merely is, and thank goodness for that. But don’t ever thank God.
And don’t thank Geoff of Pffffff-twib, either.
FAITH WITHOUT PROOF
(YOU WOULDN’T BUY IT TODAY)
A harmony between modern empirical evidence and archaic faith systems can not exist. Humanity is and always will be a divided beast; on one side we have people who believe in and worship all-powerful entities that promise a life everlasting beyond the flesh, and on the other side there are people who don’t believe in gods, but instead accept the results of slow but steady scientific progress and a growing understanding of nature and evolution both global and universal. You can’t marry those two ways of thinking together; to even assume a harmonic co-existence between believing in a god and accepting all scientific realisations is, frankly, oxymoronic.
I can believe in an entity capable of creating what to our ancient ancestors was the known universe – the Earth, its Moon, four other planets visible to the naked eye (called wandering stars, back then), the Sun and a sprinkling of stars in admittedly a much more beautiful night sky than the modern one – a very small area of a single galaxy among billions (remembering that ancient man had no conception of the clusters of light which we, in modern times, know to be distant galaxies.) I can believe such creation to be plausible, but I don’t believe that’s how we, as humans, came to be here. I don’t believe it because of the evidence of evolution and the ever-deepening understanding of an ever-increasing universe.
I also don’t believe it because – and this is the part that usually shakes most beliefs – I know that when I die it will all be over, that as far as my consciousness will be concerned I may as well have never existed, and this entire universe may as well not exist. I’m not going anywhere except back to mingling with the dust of that huge expanse called existence. That fact terrifies me, but I’ve accepted it because there is not one nugget of evidence throughout all of our historical understanding to prove otherwise. There is only wishful thinking.
Although I can accept that entities with great abilities could and possibly do exist somewhere out there, either as a result of lengthy evolution or something more primal and unknown, I still could never conscionably worship such an entity, even if science went on to discover that, yes, after all we really were created by a more evolved being or race of beings. It still doesn’t give such entities the right to command my praise and the praise of an entire species. In fact, the Sun worshippers were the closest to the truth.
We are a random and unlikely occurrence of nature, improbable but almost certainly not alone in the universe. And our creator is the universe itself. I’m never going to worship that, but I’m always going to respect it.
In John 14:12, Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Doesn’t this sound like Jesus is saying that anyone who believes in him will be able to perform miracles greater than those Jesus himself was allegedly capable of? So where are those miracles? I see no empirical evidence of any such “great works” since Jesus’ demise, only scientific advancement, which includes medical advancement.
In John 14:16-17, Jesus goes on to say, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” Note the capital S for Spirit, but lower-case h for him (meaning the Spirit, an aspect of God, who anywhere else gets a capital H for Him/He/His.) Doesn’t this sound as weak-winded an argument as any that some modern Christians come up with on a daily basis?
Jesus saying, “Well, he’s here. You can’t see him or sense him, but he is here!” just sounds like a child trying to convince itself or others of a lie or a tall-tale. Also, what is “the world cannot accept him” all about? Sounds a bit self-defeatist, doesn’t it? Evidence, Jesus; Philip asked you for it, and you just blabbered on in a long-winded monologue that amounted to nothing. I can picture Philip’s face while you were talking – he was probably shaking his head and thinking, “What am I doing following this flim-flam artist?”
Let’s suppose that Christianity doesn’t yet exist, and let’s say hypothetically that the human population consists only of believers in the Roman Pantheon, and Jews, and those who don’t prescribe to a religion. Now tell me, if Jesus came along in this hypothetical situation and started prattling such weak cases as the one he gave to Philip, in a bid to get people to believe his preachings, follow him and even deify him, surely you wouldn’t buy what he was selling? Would you?
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAGIC
If the Abrahamic deity could be disproven, what else would be snuffed out in its wake? Other extant religions like Hindu? Agnosticism? Belief in supernatural or paranormal phenomena such as fairies and ghosts?
As humanity has grown, so we’ve gradually removed the cloak from magic by replacing it with rational answers. In doing this, have we perhaps lost a part of that which made us search for those answers in the first place? If there were nothing else to disprove, would our sense of wonder become stagnant, knowing all that remained was (as far as we’re able to prove today) merely a universe with a diameter of nearly 100 billion light years, almost completely devoid of sentient life?
As an atheist, I’m guilty of accusing religion of stagnating humanity, which indeed it has done and continues to do. But does religion also add an element of supernatural wonder that perhaps plays a vital role in the growth of humanity? Perhaps an existence without speculation would diminish our creativity. I am a writer, a poet and an artist with a modest degree of ability, and I rely on my imagination to carve my crafts into an experience that might instil appreciation, and in the best of cases might also catalyse some strong emotional responses. Much of my work depends on the ability to imagine that something could exist, regardless of the likelihood, and without necessitating the need to believe in its existence.
It is our collective imagination that gave us religions, but which also gave us stories which, although equally as fantastic as the religions, were never or rarely taken as fact. There is nothing wrong with having a creative mind; there should be no blame cast on those who carve tales from imagination and spread those stories to others. Inflating the truth is an inherent trademark of any good storyteller, of which Odysseus was a prime example. But of course Odysseus is only a character in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; we have as much proof of his existence as we have of that of Jesus – to wit, none. Perhaps both men existed, perhaps neither. Whether they did exist or not scarcely matters, nor does it matter whether they believed their own stories; what ought to matter is how we as more enlightened 21st century humans recognise the works of Homer and the works of the various authors and transliterators of the Bible as being nothing more than stories with a sprinkling of magic. In modern times nobody deifies Odysseus, so why would t
hey do so with his New Testament counterpart?
Magic and wonder play an important part of the overall experience of being human, but what a vast percentage of humanity lacks is the ability to separate fact from fiction, to distinguish fantasy from reality.
Let magic in to your life, but please for the love of goats try to recognise it for what it is – a figment of the creative mind.
A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
(FROM THEISM TO DEISM)
Deism is not theism. The Prime Mover is a theoretical, nameless force, not stapled onto any orthodox faith system.
Deism doesn’t label; it suggests.
There are, among theists, those whose senses tell them that their holy book isn’t completely right for them, but who still feel the presence of something in the universe. I, as an atheist, also feel there is more than merely what our limited human senses and technological senses allow us to experience, but I don’t believe in a cosmic entity.
That being said, perhaps I can help some of those who are stuck within one of the Abrahamic faith systems (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and have come to believe that all is not right about Yahweh/God/Allah.
Don’t get confused between theism and deism.
It might be that you’ve begun to lean more towards deistic thinking than that of organised religion, and you might wish to re-examine your views in terms of whether the faith you belong to is really the right choice for you. Perhaps deism is more your thing. A Prime Mover, after all, does not command loyalty and obedience, does not demand prayer and worship, does not sentence unruly children or unfaithful wives to death, does not hate unbelievers and homosexuals, does not call for the ritual genital mutilation of children, does not—
