What I Believe
A brief manifesto of rational thought
Occasionally updated and edited.
Copyright © 2009
Summary
• The human mind innately demands explanations. It creates and believes fantasy by default to fill that demand. It then 'sees' what it believes.
• Bad behavior is a human condition that is often expressed through religion. When religion is absent, bad behavior remains. Religion, itself, is benign.
• Emphasis is placed on the ill-conceived notion that anti-theism is an antidote to delusional thinking.
Is is
The objective is not to be religious or non-religious. The objective is to be objective.
Our minds abandon objectivity. This is seen when we confuse our beliefs with reality. It's as if 'it' is true because we believe it to be true.
However, believing the world is round or flat has no bearing on its roundness or flatness. It is what it is regardless of one's belief.
Believing God exist or does not exist has no bearing on his existence or nonexistence. Is is what is is regardless of what we believe is is.
That can be summarized in this fundamental observation: Is is.
Accepting reality
Peeling away the non-objective components of Christianity is like peeling away the layers of an onion. Eventually you run out of onion.
After 50 years in the Christian paradigm, I decided to confront the inconsistencies and absurdities and acknowledge reality. It was not an immediate awakening, but analogous to a sunrise when darkness gradually gives way to light. The mental images that populate the darkness disappear as one's sight welcomes the clarity of reality.
By the time I was 50 years old I could see clearly but preferred to "hang on" to what I wanted to believe rather than what I knew to be true. It's akin to keeping one's eyes closed after sunrise, to prefer ghosts, goblins and fairies that one imagines flit about in the darkness; to walk by faith rather than sight.
Four years later — after a long, dark night immersed in the blackness of Christian fundamentalism and all it's dreamland fantasies — I realized I had to open my eyes and embrace the sunlight and all it revealed. I had to leave the religious comfort zone and accept raw reality without the religious pacifiers.
Human fantasy
At the root is the human predilection for imagination; to create and embrace concepts beyond reality. That capacity gave us the wheel and the Internet. It also gave us God and good luck. It propels humanity to the apogee of the animal kingdom and lowers us to living in an imaginary world that does not exist.
Human fantasy, then, engenders more than religion. It births a host of abstracts, concepts, and notions that defy reality. Atheism is not exempt. Rather, it often fabricates absurdities no less fantastic than those devised by religion.
The mind that concocts angels we have heard on high also imagines religion to be the root of all evil. The one fantasy grows from Christian lore, the other from atheism's illusionary reactionism. Both are equally bogus. Both exist in the predawn darkness.
Most theists rail against and reject those they deem apostates; those who stray from their straight and narrow philosophy. I have found many atheists to be no more tolerant.
The atheists' inclination to deny their own illusions is just cause to distance oneself from the atheist label.
Believing is seeing
Our minds appear to be innately hard wired to see what we believe. None of us, atheists included, are exempt; few dare to resist the inclination.
Believe in God? You see his mighty hand moving entire nations while guiding the most intricate steps of your life.
Believe in UFOs? Chances are you've seen evidence of their existence.
Believe in conspiracy theories? You wonder why others can be so blind.
Believe in global warming? Certainly the evidence is overwhelming.
Believe global warming is a hoax? Again, the evidence is overwhelming.
Believe in creation? The evidence of design is apparent.
Believe in evolution? Only a fool could overlook the evidence.
It is summarized by the observation of the Apostle Paul. He wrote, "We walk by faith, not by sight." The writer of Hebrews noted that faith is not merely the "substance of things hoped for," is it "the evidence of things not seen."
Seeing what we believe is not necessarily wrong, providing what we believe is rooted in reality. In that respect, imagination can be powerfully positive.
Imagination afforded the Wright brothers the ability to preconceive human flight. They believed it could be done before it was done. Their faith was the substance of things hoped for. Though none had seen human flight, their belief in their theories was all the evidence needed to proceed.
Faith, then, is not religious specific. Nor must it always be delusional.
Imagination empowers our minds to reach beyond observation, comprehend a rearrangement of reality, preclude the results of that rearrangement, and act upon the preclusion. The actions can produce inventions, like the Wright brother's airplane, that enhance our quality of life and the environment in which we exist.
Benefits of religion
Fiction is one such invention. When fiction is believed, we call it religion. While all believed fiction may not be religion, I can think of no religion that is not believed fiction. Like other human inventions, religion can enhance our quality of life and improve our environment.
While fiction provides entertainment and stimulates our minds, religion adds elements that satisfy our innate need for explanations and soothe mental anguish.
Evangelical Christian religion allows us to explain bad behavior by personifying evil as a devil. It explains our environment by creating a creator. It justifies nature's flaws by attributing them to a sin-induced curse.
Religion relieves stress inherent to uncontrollable circumstances, such as death, by imagining life after death, heaven, or reincarnation. It provides a sense of ultimate justice by imagining hell.
Because religion is almost universally group focused, it meets human social needs.
When accompanied with a strong sense of altruism, religion benefits society through philanthropy with the added benefit of relieving government obligations and, thereby, intrusions.
Religion is also a powerful modifier of human behavior. The naughty or nice lists that accompany most religious disciplines inhibit anti-social behavior. For example: Violent crime is almost non-existent on college campuses controlled by religious groups that embrace good behavior as a component of their belief system and contend that divine rewards and retribution are meted justly to all by a supernatural deity with an all-seeing eye and low toleration of bad behavior.
The objective is not to deny human fantasy but to acknowledge it and utilize it rationally.
Faults of fantasy
Some religious fantasies are not beneficial. Beliefs that deny medical care, advocate holy jihads, and endorse ethnic bigotry are a few examples. Others include: Abusing the mentally handicapped as demonic, religious-driven violence, consigning oneself — or an entire caste — to poverty, polygamous doctrines that encourage child abuse, etc.
Atheism is not exempt
Many atheists posture themselves as anti-theists. Deeming religion to be the root of all evil, they engage in their own non-holy jihad to defame and discredit religion and its practitioners. Atheists who engage in such bigotry fail to recognize that, while bad behavior is often expressed through religion, it is ultimately an innate human condition. Ridding oneself of religious dogma does not rid oneself of a propensity for bad behavior.
Noting that atheist regimes have almost universally been repressive falls on deaf ears. Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro are a few of the noted atheist dictators who enforced religious intolerance among other brutal policies.
Atheist apologists may excuse such extremism by portraying communism as a non-theistic cult that bears resemblance to religion. That assertion is a credible argument. It fails, however, to erase "godless communism's" atheist core. Oddly, those same apologists fail to recognize that atheism can be a non-theistic religion.
There are notable exceptions.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is one example. When asked if she believed in God, she replied, "No I don't ... I'm not a religious person ... [I'm] a great respecter of religious beliefs but they're not my beliefs." 1 Ayn Rand is another example. Though not a governor, she refuted the elements of government control and force that characterized the regimes of history's most brutal atheist despots.
The objective is to be objective
If we define religion to be subset of philosophy, it would be placed along side atheism, communism and an array of others. Religion is a philosophy usually distinguished by the inclusion of supernatural elements. Atheists typically draw the false conclusion that, because their philosophy rejects supernatural elements, it is somehow exempt from fantasy. When atheists imagine religion to be the root of all evil, they are incorporating a fantasy into their philosophy. While the fantasy may not be supernatural, it may be equally irrational.
Anti-theism is sacrosanct within much the atheist community. To find value in religion is anathema; addressing atheist-embraced fantasy is blasphemy. It is a testable pattern available to anyone who cares to read through various atheism-themed websites: Atheists tend to cast away religious absurdities to embrace anti-religious absurdities. It is an exchange of silliness for silliness; a reversal of pro vs con for con vs pro in which theistic-based fantasy is replaced with anti-theistic fantasy. If religion is irrational, they presume, then anti-religion must be rational. Both deny reality and are, therefore, equally absurd.
There is a dearth of objective rational thinking that permits the value of religion. Such rational evaluation will get you outed, then ousted, as a heretic from the St. Richard Dawkins Church or the Sam Harris Society, but acceptance is not the objective.
One thing I've leaned when interacting with atheists: Nothing evokes consternation more readily than noting an atheist's religiosity. Fortunately there are a few exceptions.
As noted earlier, bad behavior is a human condition. It may be expressed through religion or any other philosophy. Religion is benign.
2009