I think that there is a certain honour and privilege attached to being asked to express your views.
Most of us express views by a general consent, in conversations, by letter, or in an online chatroom; but being asked to to contribute your opinion is something that is to be treasured. I have certainly learnt this through my working life where those higher up the management chain only occasionally value the different perspective that their employees can bring to an issue or great idea.
UbiquitousRat is one of those great friends who doesn’t need time or contact to maintain that value as a friend, and I’d like to thank him for this opportunity. Especially as I am an atheist.
What can an atheist bring to CoolReligion.net?
Well, maybe some assurances first.
I am not here to “convert” or to destroy anybody’s beliefs or faith. I will not suddenly descend into a Dawkins-esque deconstruction of all religions and their gods.
I am however, open to challenges to the way I view my life, so all comments are welcome.
I’d like to take you on a little journey.
Take a deep breath and, assuming you have an active faith, just take a few minutes to think about your religion and its god or goddess.
Embrace the warm feeling it brings you when you remember all the joys your faith has given you. Revel in the security of knowing that there is someone there who will always love you, will hold your hand when you feel the days are too hard, or run with you when the days are light, carefree and breezy… like the best memories of when you were a child.
How good does that feel?
Now close all those feelings down. Forget the memories. Drive that love out of your heart – but just for a moment.
Push to become a tabula rasa, a blank state of emotion and memory.
Now remember the news today. Look at everything around you. Think of every injustice and inequality that you have come across over the past few years.
Remember that it is us humans that have shaped the world we now live in, that all those things we fight against every day, that hit you in the stomach like a sudden dull ache, are the responsibility of someone like you and that you are perfectly capable of committing similar acts or demonstrating similar attitudes.
Think about every time you have doubted yourself, or that someone has let you or your family down. Everyday you wake up to fight through the barriers, inconsistencies and disappointments that modern life is designed to throw at you, to keep you suppressed and obedient.
Now how do you feel?
Now do you remember that first feeling? That feeling of warmth, of love and security?
If you ever get a crisis of faith, if you ever question your religious beliefs or your commitment, just remember that feeling. Remember how good it feels.
Walk towards your god or goddess, don’t wait for him or her to come to you. Take pride in your religion, revel in your beliefs, and gain strength from your faith. Not only will that smile that gently snuggles onto your face make you feel better and more confident in dealing with the world, but it will spread to those around you.
Even us atheists.
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Editor’s Note: I’d like to thank FustratedHistorian for sharing his thoughts and introducing himself to the community here. It’s my sincere hope that we might tempt him to write one or two more posts as the weeks, months, and years roll by.
Here’s a challenge for you: atheism is as much a belief system as any other religion. You choose to believe there’s no god, though, like religion, you can’t really prove it either way. You can only offer soliloquy as to why religions and belief in deities seems irrational.
Disclaimer: I’m an atheist too. Or rather, it’s not that I don’t believe there’s a god… to be honest, I don’t care either way. I can live my life as a good person without a god or religious dogma. If there is a god, then s/he is a pretty disappointing benefactor. If there isn’t, then I’m glad I haven’t wasted any of my adult life on it.
Which brings me specifically to your post … I was brought up a Catholic and apart from out-right refusing to be confirmed when I was 14, I really didn’t have any choice until I hit 16 when my mother told me I don’t have to go to church any more. Even then I had to carry on going to a Catholic school and sixth form and had it rammed down my throat.
Cut a long story short, I really don’t get those ‘warm feelings’ from thinking about my time as a Catholic. What I do remember is fear. Fear of God. Praying every night as a young child either because otherwise God wouldn’t be happy and I was scared for the safety of my family, or through fear of something else and wanting desperately for some external force to help me out. It never did. Any memory of religion or god from my youth gives me a sinking feeling of despair and disappointment.
Rather than cloaking themselves in a comfort blanket of warm-feelings, people would be better off taking responsibility for their own actions, or in the vast majority of cases, in-action. Society needs to wake up and religion is just sand that most people bury their head in. Religion stifles philosophical debate… people like Richard Dawkins, A C Grayling, etc are giants amongst men in my book, but they should be norm, not the exception.
I don’t see the barriers in society that you mention, I see challenges. Sure, times can be hard, but a positive, honest attitude in which I see the silver lining in everything usually sees me through. Live your own life, not your religion’s.
(just read that back and it sounds a bit militant, sorry … just my gut reaction to your post)
Hey Brindy – thanks for the awesome comment! I might not entirely agree with your assessment, but it’ll be great to see how FustratedHistorian (aka Rob) will respond to you. I’m sure he’ll hop on sometime soon and drop you a reply (no pressure, FH!).
That aside, I can well relate to the fear reaction to God-stuff. I have seen that in people time and again, and it’s a powerful motivator away from religious ideas. Never under-estimate the power of our fears.
That being said, be aware that your fear-reaction, and past negative experiences, will likely be influencing your views towards religious / philosophical debate. While I might agree that, today, the religious folk are often not adding much to the debate (no, in fact often just the opposite) it’s worth considering that this has not always been the case. Christianity, for instance, strongly shaped Western European thinking as it was blended with Socratic and Platonic philosophy… and that led, ultimately, to the Enlightenment… and so on.
What’s my point? Well, maybe it’s the PEOPLE in the religions, and the way in which they are failing to think about their beliefs critically, that is the real enemy of the debates you want to have. Be careful not to reject the ideas just because of the people who expound them… they are not all alike.
Now… over to other people with far more wisdom than I…
Hello Brindy and thanks for replying to my post. You leave me with a real challenge because you have responded on a very personal level; the challenge will be in replying effectively and convincingly while not knowing you. Yet such is the joy of the challenge!
Obviously you know my post wasn’t aimed at yourself but it is a great reminder that we can’t pick who reads what we write online if we want that message to get out to as wide an audience as possible. In addition its also a stark reminder of the challenge of post modernism and language. But enough mooching.
We live in a world of beliefs. Belief is necessary when we cannot prove what we know. Hence even a person such as your self who doesn’t care about a god, can only believe that as there is no proof for or against a god existence. Curiously enough I can concoct a far better proof for the existence of a god than I can for the lack of one. Hey ho, maybe thats another post. I have to agree with Ubiquitous Rat that you have fallen foul of somebody else belief system. We all know that catholicism has done a lot of wrong (as well as good), and that it is dogmatic, over dependent on ceremonial structures and reinforcement to provide support and discipline to its followers. Yet we also know that catholics themselves are amongst some of the most dogmatic of believers, and as such they don’t necessarily understand that a persons relationship with a god is very personal, otherwise belief has no solid foundation. You might have ended up trying to follow someone elses belief structure, and it would never have worked. Of course, there is nothing to say you were ever going to have a catholic belief structure of your own and that the path you are on was inevitable. Onto some specifics:
“Rather than cloaking themselves in a comfort blanket of warm-feelings, people would be better off taking responsibility for their own actions, or in the vast majority of cases, in-action. Society needs to wake up and religion is just sand that most people bury their head in. Religion stifles philosophical debate… people like Richard Dawkins, A C Grayling, etc are giants amongst men in my book, but they should be norm, not the exception.”
This is quite a complex paragraph and I think it might be easier to deal in two parts. In the western liberal democracies we are inheritors of the guiding principles of the Enlightenment’s ideals. These ideals were not born out of the condition that they are now applied to – the Enlightenments philosophers were often a part of an elite and religious individuals. What they challenged was the inevitability of the societal structure of the time being ordained and demanded by god; mostly for possibly, perceived personal gain. They felt that individuals, societies and nations should determine the structure of the society and the state. What we see now everyday is the continual reinforcement of those ideals. We have some freedom, but arguably in the “public opininion” it can be seen that our traditional religions have less freedom than secular structures. For instance insisting that Catholic Adoption agencies serve homosexuals, and that lady not being allowed to wear her crucifix at work. So I think society is well on the way to marginalising religion as a controlling part of our state, but obviously it is not perfect; take Education.
What I will counter with is that religion does not stifle philosophical debate, history is littered with it; however dogmatism, fanaticism and ignorance does and this can be attributed as much to religion as other societal structures. So bearing that in mind, a healthy society should feel confident in embracing religious philosphers alongside secular or athiest ones. And there have been some amazing religious as well as theological philosophers.
Finally I think in one complex way or another most religions insist on a degree of personal responsibility for ones actions, and that is getting more reinforced as society evolves. Some people might choose to hide behind their religion so that they don’t have to face the reality of the world around them but again, you could argue that there are people who will always find a way to avoid having to confront the fears, worries and realities. Religion offers an easier comfort blanket for these people, but they will always be there in society.
“I don’t see the barriers in society that you mention, I see challenges. Sure, times can be hard, but a positive, honest attitude in which I see the silver lining in everything usually sees me through. Live your own life, not your religion’s.” So to my post. When Ubiquitous Rat kindly asked me to write something, one of the things he mentioned was to try and be helpful. As an introductory post, I chose something which I thought would be helpful and thoughtful. When one is looking at the wrong end of a cul de sac, it is often very difficult to remember just to turn around and leave. When people reach a crisis of confidence (or faith) it is hard not to see things that we once thought of as simple challenges, as insurmountable barriers. It also becomes very difficult to remember what the good times were truly like. My hope was to take any religious reader through a small journey that would not only remind them why they loved their religion, but that would leave them feeling very positive. I have my own ways of achieving this as I am sure you do too.
So I apologise for anything you may feel as waffle, and I hope that you have enjoyed my response. Thank you.
Quite frankly the issues of ‘evil and suffering’ are only issues if you claim to believe in one God who is described as all powerful, all knowing, and all loving. the debate goes back as far as Epicurus (4th Century BC). But rather than get into it now, I simply refer to two very different thinkers. Moses Maimonedes (12th Century AD), a Jewish philosopher theologian, essentially argued that it is a matter of perspective – do you wish to focus on the bad or the good? Perception is a big part of the problem. One of the most important (and still living) Christian theologians of the 20th Century was Jurgen Moltmann. He lived through the Concentration camps. His most significant book is ‘The Crucified God’. In it he first pointed out that the reality of evil and suffering in this world makes it easier to believe in a devil than God, but still pointed out that any solution, as a Christian, begins with understanding the death of Jesus of Nazareth.
Granted that these are very sweeping statements, but it’s late at night and I’ve just spent most of the evening on my thesis, and haven’t got the brain power left *sigh*. sorry. FYI – its Tolkien and the Problem of evil!