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(Clearly it’s Atheism Day at PunkAssBlog.)

When I was seven years old, I thought that sunbeams breaking through the rainclouds was Jesus (or God, I wasn’t too clear on the distinction back then) looking down at me. Seven-year-olds are pretty egocentric; it never really occurred to me at hundreds of other people at the very minimum were in visual range of the exact same meteorological phenomenon and therefore, Jesus (or God!) was equally looking down at them.

I liked going to church back then. I loved to sing, and one thing that Southern Baptist congregations do well is belt ‘em out in praise of the Lord–every church I went to with my grandparents back in those days had a near-professional quality choir. I wasn’t as keen on the actual sermon, especially when the pastor would start pounding on the podium and shouting (Southern Baptists like to do that too). But my grandma, when the shouting and pounding would start, would cuddle me close and even let me rest my head on her lap if I wanted to, and that was good enough for me. I did notice, of course, that my mom never went with us, but as my mom made a habit of avoiding anything that went on in the mornings any day of the week period, I didn’t take any special note of it.

My grandma had bought me a children’s bible–I’ve never seen anything like it since and I would frankly love to find another copy of the one she got me someday; the artwork alone was completely fascinating and gorgeous to my seven-year-old mind, not like the sloppy crap I’ve mostly happened across that passes for children’s bibles illustrations since. However, I also haven’t really seen such a gruesome and accurate rendition of a lot of the harder-core Old Testament stories in children’s bibles since then, either–more modern versions seem to skip over the majority of the Old Testament entirely and spend a lot more time focusing on Jesus. My bible, as I recall, did indeed contain the stories of Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt and Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac.

By the time I was twelve, I was feeling rather more iffy about organized Christianity, and actually about the idea that Christianity was the only one and true faith, but I still unquestioningly believed in some sort of deity that oversaw us all. I did want to find a place of worship to inspire me, as well. I went to church with various friends over the next few years, but never really found what I was looking for. Amusingly enough, the best fit I found–which honestly was only that because it was the church the greatest number of my friends attended–when I spoke to the pastor about possibly joining the congregation, he told me that he didn’t think I was ready to make that kind of decision. (I remember how bad I felt about that at the time–what evil had he somehow sensed in me that would have led him to discourage me so? At the time, I was a very nice girl. Who knows?)

I remember when I was fourteen, I (quite daringly, I thought) told my biology lab partner that I didn’t really believe in God. I wasn’t serious, but she was deeply shocked and horrified. I soothed her by saying I hadn’t, as I said, really been serious, but her shocked reaction stayed with me for a long time after that. She had never struck me as particularly godly in either behavior or goals. Why was the idea of atheism so horrifying to her?

By the time I was eighteen, I was in the military and overseas and the idea of God was even farther away than home. I had a set of dog tags that I wore 24 hours a day, seven days a week–who I was, boiled down to a few simple lines:

LASTNAME
LISA D
SOCIAL-SECURITY-NUMBER
B POS
NO REL PREF

I wasn’t an atheist, but by that time I was certainly agnostic. God had become to me a bizarre verbal trigger that otherwise utterly Godless individuals periodically invoked, usually when terrified and/or looking for a fight–I saw no evidence otherwise of lives lived in any particularly moral fashion that I could tie to the beliefs espoused by anyone around me. However, I didn’t consider that to be evidence that God did not exist; I simply considered it evidence of the lack of genuine meaning that the mere fact of membership in and cultural and familial upbringing including an organized religion conferred upon anyone.

As I progressed through young adulthood, though, the central question of Is there a God? began to plague me more often. Sometimes it even seemed important. I remembered the simple comfort of my childhood beliefs…but realized that I had had the same comfort level in the unquestioning faith in my mother’s love for me, and my grandmother’s, and my father’s. As it had turned out, two out of those three faiths had been somewhat in error. I had discovered that based upon the words and actions of the principals towards me over the course of the years. I hadn’t had such direct interaction with God, though, so similar methods of determining the actual existence of His love for me were not available. More indirect methods would have to be used.

I managed finally to boil the entire conundrum down to three basic questions:

1. Is there any evidence of a deity that can’t be explained in any other way?
2. Is the fact that so many people believe that there is some sort of deity or deities direct evidence of one’s existence?
3. Is the fact that believing that there is an all-powerful being who loves you and cares about you is very emotionally positive and sustaining sufficient justification for that belief?

The answer to question number 1 is generally no. The best that can be done is that there is evidence of phenomena that we don’t have thorough and complete explanations for, and therefore a deity can’t be definitively ruled out. Unfortunately, one can’t be ruled in, either.

The answer to question number 2 is generally no. Large swathes of people believe not only in all sorts of things that have no logical bases whatsoever, they believe them in direct opposition to the beliefs of other large swathes of people. I have personally known many people that believed things that I knew, from laboratory-style proof, were not true. Therefore, like number 1, what the majority of people believe about anything, while it doesn’t rule out a deity, doesn’t rule one in either.

The answer the question number 3 is on a practical level, yes, but on a philosophical level, no. Wishful thinking is necessary for some people’s mental well-being, based upon their particular psychological makeup and/or the specific circumstances of their lives. However, this in no way means that whatever their particular crutch is, really exists outside the boundaries of their own minds. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, either, of course.

So my agnosticism was quite set in stone, but I still hesitated to make the leap to atheism. After all, there was no proof that there wasn’t a deity. I could neither find any nor come up with any, and that hasn’t changed.

What has changed is my moral stance in regards to a deity–specifically, whether or not I should be loving one or worshipping one, for instance, and if it is even the more moral choice to do so.

Do I want anyone to love me? Yes, I do, very much. However, do I want others to simply love me, because I exist, rather than basing that love on what I give them–my time, my energy, my affection, my aid? Do I expect them to love me no matter what capricious whim I exert upon their lives? Absolutely not–that would be a psychotic attitude in anyone. Yet it is the attitude we are supposed to have towards a deity. I reject that as a moral stance.

Do I want anyone to worship me? No, under any circumstances whatsoever. Would I ever want anyone to bow low before me as I pass and praise me, their master, fulsomely and regularly every day of their lives? The idea fills me with revulsion. There are people, past and present, who have and do want that–but I find that repellent. But what if I were a genuinely superior being–say, as I’m superior to cats and dogs? …but I find no need for daily validation from the worship of inferior beings, and yes, I question the morality and mentality of any superior being that does desire this–desires it to the point where if it is not proferred, either outright slaughters those inferior beings who do not or sentences them to eternal torture.

So I have come to this point–that I am agnostic about the existence of a deity, and an atheist in terms of paying homage to one whether it exists or not. I especially resist being told by other human beings that I must, by force of law, do what they say a deity has instructed them that we all must do; there are too many of them out there with too contradictory of instructions, and the only determining factor of which human being really has the real hotline to God’s demands seems to be his position of power in his particular culture. There are no cultures that have survived from the antiquity of human civilization until today, nor any associated prophet’s communications, which would at least provide that consistent and logical pattern that we observe genuine forces outside of human control to possess.

So what do I “believe” in, if anything? I believe in myself, in my ability to use my existence to do more than intake fuel, expel waste and reproduce more of the same–I believe in my own productive capacity, and in the productive capacity of all people. I believe that both cooperation and individuality are equally important and that the only constraints on both should be the degree of harm caused to others in pursuit of collective and individual goals. I believe that there is no such thing as too much knowledge outside of the boundaries of individual’s private lives, and that there can never be any knowledge that can be morally kept from anyone based upon some other person’s judgement that it is “for his own good.”

Am I as happy as someone who believes implicitly that a heavenly Father is watching over his every move, ready to step in with, at the minimum, emotional support when times get hard? On a day-to-day basis, perhaps not. But it’s a price I’m willing to pay, to have my judgement unclouded by the whims of either deities that don’t communicate with me directly or people who say that they know for me what that deity would be communicating if only he, well, did. It is harder to be self-directed; freedom is frequently harder than servitude in terms of mental turmoil and indecisiveness and fear of the unknown. But I choose it anyway.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 2:10 am and is filed under Punkass!, Culture, Godbaggery, Philosophisizining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.