I don't know whether I should call myself an atheist. I'm more of an agnostic, I suppose - I just don't know. Unlike the religious, who are so certain about the existence of God, all I can say is "I'm not so sure". A lot of this sitting on the fence business is purely selfish. I become very "God aware" in situations like "Oh God, please let me make this deadline", or "Damn this airplane is moving like a drunk 1980's disco star - please God don't let me die". I get that - it's reassuring. There's a big boss who'll take care of me. Thunderstorm, yawn. Engine on fire, pshaw! I don't need to worry, 'cuz God's looking after me.
But selfish motives aside, there have been accounts of people who have had intense spiritual experiences. A part of me argues that neuroscience will probably explain this in a few years, if it hasn't already, as some state of the human mind. And another part of me argues that it would be extremely arrogant of me to deny the existence of something that I perhaps do not have the capacity to fathom. Science is very humble in this sense - it does not close its eyes to new evidence, or the possibility that what it knows could be revised or discarded completely. And this puts it at a very distinct disadvantage to religion - which is based on the tenet of "Do not question - you must have faith." The burden of proof always falls on the non-believer, even though that is patently unfair. If tomorrow I come and tell you, "Hey, I just saw a 5-legged DragonCat in Walmart today", you'd either ignore me as a lunatic, or you'd say "What is that? You're making this up. Do you have any pictures?". It would be unreasonable, by any stretch of imagination, to say "I have faith. I KNOW it exists. You prove that it doesn't exist". No matter how hard you try (which of course you wouldn't, since this is the point you'd start ignoring me as aforementioned lunatic), you cannot possibly prove its non-existence because there may always be that one place you didn't look. An individual who makes such unsubstantiated claims would quite probably be dismissed as a lunatic, but when billions do - it is religion, and God forbid (haha, see what I did there) you question it. Unquestioning faith has the luxury of being just that, impervious to questions. Why is there pain and suffering? If God created Man, why did He make such a faulty product punishable by eternal damnation? The answer is simply "We do not know His ways".
My point is that I understand spirituality - I believe it is possible for us to reach a state of mind that is beyond the mundane. What I don't understand, is religion. I have no issues with people who are religious. In fact, I'm a bit jealous of them - it must be great to have complete faith in an all-powerful, all-knowing friend who has your back. Ugh, who would want to face this world on their own?! The problem starts when religion stops becoming a personal, private affair - and suddenly becomes a tool for political agenda, for society to pass judgment on what is wrong and what is right, and worst of all, for a group to hate others who believe in a different religion.
I think most religions are simply codes of conduct, a moral and social compass to lead the unthinking masses (how ironic that Jesus was a shepherd). If you read the ten commandments, they seem to be a rather desperate attempt to civilize a nascent society. It seems strange to me that an omniscient, all-powerful being would do the whole burning bush drama and force Moses to hike up a mountain just to tell him "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's". If I were Moses, I would have said - "I know that! Any guy who has a shred of decency knows that." And there are so many things left out. For example, "Don't rape your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox or donkey." Yet we miraculously know not to do those things. There's also the sticky commandment of "You shall have no other Gods before me". Ouch. That's a pretty insecure God, right there. If you're the sole all-powerful God, why would you even bring up the topic of other Gods? And then who's to say who's right? Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all acknowledge the ten commandments. Awkward. Hinduism has thousands of gods. So did the ancient Greeks. In fact if you believe in a monotheistic religion, then you are essentially saying - I don't believe in these thousands of Gods. Looks pretty atheistic to me!
I remember debating with an evangelist at UT Austin. He was making the standard arguments - I'll lay out a couple of them. A common one is without God, and the notion of heaven and hell, society would be in anarchy and that we have a moral compass instilled in us by God. Why have a police force, then? Or even a constitution or laws? Good and bad are not always in black and white - there are multiple shades of gray. For the longest time, slavery and segregation was considered completely acceptable. The caste system was the norm in ancient India. The practice of sati, in which a widow is forced to jump into her husband's funeral pyre, was also once a social norm. Where was the moral compass then? Technical glitch? Momentary lapse? Nope! It's simply that we, as a society, evolve. Our moral standards evolve. I would much rather support the guy who is against rape because he is disgusted by it as a decent human being, rather than because he is afraid God will punish him if he doesn't control his urges.
Another argument that is commonly made is that there is such complexity and incredible beauty in the world, there must be a Creator who made it. A scarily large percentage of the American population believes in Creationism over evolution - not hard to fathom when you see the antics of public institutions of learning like the Kansas Education Board. And yet, the argument behind Intelligent Design is so flawed. Let's take 2 cases - it is up to you to judge which one is more reasonable. The first is that a man just got out of bed and suddenly designed the Canon EOS 5D Mark III from scratch. The second is that cameras started as something crude and basic like a pinhole camera. Over years, the design was modified and improved. Unpopular models went out of production. And after years of small improvements - we have something like the Canon EOS series. Heck, if you're a software developer, you know that object oriented programming was designed so that you could write abstract base classes and then through inheritance you could make meaningful additions for increasingly complex scenarios. In fact, the whole idea that you must believe in God because it is too hard to believe in any other scenario that explains the existence of something as complex as the human eye is paradoxical. If God created the human eye, then He is definitely more complex than it. Must I believe in a super-God who created God then?
Faith is not a bad thing. It gives people immense strength and hope in situations where there is none. It drives people to better themselves and to lead good lives. But let's face it - we may never know if there's a God or not. We may never know if there's a heaven or hell. You are free to believe in the existence of any of these - but there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence refuting or verifying those claims. So just live life for the present. Don't spend your life worrying about burning in eternal fires or being denied entry at the pearly gates. Live it as good human being. Accept the fact that you are responsible for yourself, and that humanity and nature are divine in themselves. In the beautiful words of Blake:
"God Appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day"
Arey sir...end of the world on Dec 21 is suddenly making everyone spiritual :P
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