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Areligiously Yours - 'Tis the Season/Losing My Religion Write-Off entryDec 27 '09 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Just because I'm not religious doesn't mean that I don't wish you a happy holiday and joyful 2010!
In the eye of many Christian fundamentalists, the only thing worse than non-Christians seems to be ex-Christians. So, being provided with a chance to explain myself in msiduri's 'Tis The Season/Losing My Religion Write-Off', I'm re-posting an essay I posted earlier in the year on my SmorgZone Blog on the reasons of my defection from Christianity in particular and religions in general. It is not my intention to convert anyone to 'atheism'. It just gets a bit irritating to me how atheists are often compelled to justify their lack of belief in a deity while religious people are usually given a free pass. So I posted this essay as a one-stop manifesto to point my many would be evangelists to because I dislike having to repeat myself on the same subject over and over again. Whether I am a theist, an atheist or an agnostic depends almost entirely on how 'god' is defined. I can perhaps believe in god if it is defined as nature itself or the most basic fundamental laws of physics that make nature works the way it does. With that sort of definition, I can perhaps be called a theist, but I wouldn't be worshiping nature since I don't see the point of it. I and everything around me are parts of nature. I find myself in awe of the wonders of it all the time, but I'd rather admire it for what it demonstrably is rather than for what I'd like to ideologically project it to be. As for 'god' as described in the religious texts, I don't believe in such a figure. In fact, to me, if a person god does exist, I'm more inclined to believe that it would be more appreciative of people who seek to understand it on its own terms rather than ones who would willingly accept other humans' version of the story that can't be verified with anything more than 'I said it, my church said it, the book that my church believes in said it, therefore it is the only truth there is and if you question it then you are insulting god' sort of rationale. Frankly, I don't find it very intellectually stimulating to try to have a conversation with people who can't differentiate their own ideas from that of a god. I repented from the Christian faith back in 1999 when I was studying pre-medicine/chemistry in college and had a great professor who didn't mind admitting to not knowing everything. His very scientific mindset that uncertainty and doubt are nothing to be ashamed of and that they are qualities that enable even an already fantastically learned scientist to have the humility to strive to keep learning more was eye-opening for me. After a while, I got around to re-examining my then belief in the Christian dogma and came to the conclusion that the only 'evidence' I had of what I believed about Christianity was the bible itself - since the bible was supposed to be directly dictated and/or inspired by an infallible god. Everything I knew of Christianity had its origin in the Bible. So I thought to myself that in the man-made field of science, it only takes one inconsistency or factual contradiction with experimental result/observation to derail even the most established of scientific theories. One inaccurate prediction and even the most established of scientific theories must be either discarded or modified to once again match up with reality. So it follows that the standard of a god who created everything in nature would surely not be any less than man's (to expect anything less would be rather insulting to such a deity, would it not? And should a deity exist who can't even live up to man's lowly standard, why should anyone bother to worship such a thing?). With that frame of mind, I opened the first page of the Bible and started reading the book of Genesis without the 'I believe it must be true regardless' lens to filter its contents.... and never got to the second page. It was (irrationally, I'm sure) a wrench... but after some mourning (I'm really not sure what I was mourning for, really; the loss of innocence or the realization of my patent stupidity are the leading contenders) I decided that to attribute such a shoddy holey thing as the bible to be the inspiration of god is really a blasphemy I could do without. And if I discounted the bible, then I had to basically discount Christianity as a whole since it is based entirely on the bible and this notion that the bible is the infallible word of god. Anyhow... that kicked started a spree of religious and philosophical reading in the library (I've read the Torah and the Koran.... but couldn't quite finish the whole of the Bhagavad Gita). It was Thomas Paine's 'The Age of Reason' that resonated the most with me, though unlike him and other Deists I don't feel attached enough to the 'god' concept, no matter how hands-off it is, to join that sect. Since then, I've occasionally looked back on my religious fanatic years with both shame and gratitude. It was one of those life lessons that just had to be learned first hand.... and it was a very educational lesson that makes me a lot less prone to arrogance now than before. All the same, I wish it hadn't taken that many years for me to realize just how ludicrously improbable the religious premise I was so invested in was and how dehumanizing the devotion to the very flawed idea can be. As a wise man once said that 'while people good and bad do good things for many different reasons, it really takes a religion to make good and sane people do really twistedly evil stuff' (not that I ever did anything 'evil', but had I felt 'called on' to do something really bad in the name of religion, it was likely that I might comply. And just the thought that I was capable of having that mind set then chills my bones today). There are many things about the monotheistic religions, especially Christianity, that bother me, some more than the others: 1. The inability to make the distinction between believing in a god as one understands it and believing in what another man (or man-made book and church) says god said. I find it highly improbable that a god who is capable of creating the universe and everything in it would need a middle man to communicate with me. Especially when the middle man is just another human being (or books written by one). 2. The failure to realize that Christianity (or substitute any of the theistic religion here) isn't the only god-oriented religion in the world (and so the penchant for falling for Pascal's wager). It is not enough to ask 'if there is a god or not'. One also has to ask, 'If there is a god, then what is god really like and does any of the religions of the world get this god right? How can you really tell?' What if there is a god and it isn't the one that resembles what a particular religion says it is/does/wants? It seems quite imprudent to throw in one's lot with a particular belief without having explored ALL the god-oriented religions beforehand. I think a god would be less unhappy with me for not choosing any religion at all than to chose one just because others say that I will be eternally damned if I don't. 3. The requirement for blind/un-questioning faith and the celebration of unearned slice of paradise just for believing. Salvation by grace? But what is so graceful about that removing accountability from the conscience of man? Haven't we outgrown the free love 60's and graduated to the responsible world of the grown ups who know that the worthy things in life are worth working for yet? If there is a god, it gave us a brain capable of critical reasoning for a reason and the best way of honoring such a gift is to use it to guard against being suckered by another man's tales when they don't jive with evidence and/or reason. 4. The notion that only non-believers cherry pick which verses to quote from the bible (or Koran or other religious text).... and believers don't. That is patently false no matter how you look at it. The people who would quote from Leviticus to condemn homosexuals should also check to see if they are wearing clothings that are made of more than one type of fabric... And then immediately stone themselves. Just to be consistent. 5. The concept of 'original sin' and guilt by association perpetuated regardless of action for all eternity. One just has to be born to be guilty of the sin of Adam and Eve? And just how onerous is this 'original sin' anyhow? If you are to take Genesis seriously, then Adam and Eve did not gain the ability to distinguish right from wrong until they had eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge. That means that they couldn't have known that disobeying god's order was 'bad' or a 'sin'. A god would surely be well aware of all the pertinent conditions, of course. That makes the whole thing a malicious set-up by an all-knowing god to entrap not only Adam and Eve, who lacked the ability to reason, but also their unborn (and utterly innocent) offspring for all generations. Preposterous! If anyone actually has any respect for even a possibility of a deity, then he wouldn't even dream of ascribing such heinous a conduct to that god at all. 6. The Concept of 'eternal damnation/punishment' for those who don't share one's faith. It isn't a merciful or a just god who would sanction such a thing but a childishly vengeful one. There is no prospect for rehabilitation when the punishment is to last forever. And, on another note, I don't regard having eternal life as a good thing either. It seems to me that the perfect way of devaluing something is to have too much of it. Life is precious to me because I know that one day I will lose it. And the concept of having to live eternally in bliss really strikes me more as a punishment rather than a reward. Not only does one have to take life for granted for all eternity now, one must also take good and blissful things for granted, too. Think about it a bit, when all you get are good things, they are no longer good and blissful to you. They simply become 'normal' things.... You wouldn't appreciate the little good things others do for you because that would be just what you'd expect from them. "What would you do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and from living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?" - Mikhail A Bulgakov, Master and Margarita (as translated by Burgin & O'Connor) And so... I am done with religions. Don't get me wrong, I don't care if you are religious... unless you are trying to use it to pooh-pooh or to bully others who don't share your faith. To me, religion and science are really two different approaches man devised to solve the same problem; what is this wonderful universe we live in and how we fit into it. The religious approach seeks more to alleviate the insecurity we all get when we realize just how vulnerable and inconsequential we are in the grand scheme of things. The scientific approach has accepted this vulnerability as fact and seeks instead to learn as much as possible about what the universe really is and how it works. There need not be conflict between the two... but certain monotheistic religions seem keen on precipitating one. I note that no scientist has ever pushed for any science to be taught during the Sunday bible class or at the Mosque, but certain groups of Christians and Muslims are very keen on trying to make school teachers teach their religion's creation myth in science class. Religious people should keep that in mind before claiming that their religion is under attack from science. I have no faith in a ‘god'. If there is one, it and I can do fine without it. Rather, I have faith in the consistency of nature And that those who judge by the weight of empirical evidence and sound reasoning are less susceptible to manipulation and malice than those who defer to the judgment of revered others and humanly authors of scriptures to avoid being ultimately accountable for their own deeds and thoughts. I have faith in neighborly good deeds... That are not done just for the sake of one's religion and not in the hope of postmortem rewards or to avoid possible eternal punishment, but because their doers are genuinely compassionate and are capable of the empathy that makes them aware of their own vulnerability. This essay is reposted here as my entry to msiduri's 'Tis The Season/Losing My Religion Write-Off'. The Friends of the San Diego Library has her to thank for the donation of 3 Thomas Paine books this week. The original essay can be found at http://smorgzone.blogspot.com/search/label/religion  |
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