Just like priests, bishops, cardinals, popes, and indeed theologians are all born as atheist, I too was born an atheist. Yes, my dear reader, you are born as an atheist too. If you are unable to see this piece of truth, please do not blame me; blame instead your blind faith. No baby has a religion. No baby has faith in God. No baby comes out of mother’s womb a Catholic, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, or a Hindu. We are all born free and then indoctrinated. In my case, my parents and grandparents were reminded of eternal punishment in hell if they did not have me, as a child, baptized a Catholic. I ask: where was then my own free will to have chosen the kind of religion I should have wished to embrace for myself? At age 18, after having been expelled out of high-school for asking far too many questions, I began to extricate myself up and gradually out of Christian values and beliefs by entertaining the case against God - atheism. The question, “Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God? If, however, evidences were discovered that as a matter of fact a Goddess made God, I will immediately drop my atheism down the tube.
We all live as parasites on a speck of dust in an infinity of worlds. One million planets the size of earth can fit inside the sun. But 500 of our suns can be swallowed up in one small gulp by a bigger star called “Betelgeuse.” If it were true that a God created man in his own image and likeness, then God must surely be a microscopic perfection lost in self-admiration. In the meantime, if God created everything, including space and time, where was God located before he created space, and when was it before he created time?
As a devout atheist, I believe that the conquest of fear is the beginning of wisdom, as in the search for the truth, and as in the works needed for the good life, - especially the one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. No doubt, in the end, death will conquer us all; but if we must die, let us die sober, and not drunk with lies. Poch Suzara
1 comment:
Apparently, we are born with the capacity, if not the proclivity, to believe, and to believe even if there is little or no good reason to believe. Perhaps this "will to believe" is hard-wired in us, genetically. Does it serve the evolution and perpetuation of our species? Maybe. But then, could it now, memetically in a post-enlightenment period, be a vestigial faculty? Could it be likened to the human appendix--still around serving no useful function anymore yet taking up room and prone to infection?
In a study of a tribe in Melanesia, Bronislaw Malinowski found that Trobrianders would employ well-tested techniques for catching their prey when the fishermen were within what we can call their comfort zone--within a certain distance from shore, an area they were rather familiar with. But when these villagers traveled beyond that area, to waters that were foreign to them, to waters that were rough, they would first engage in certain rituals to assure them of safe passage and return. These people resorted to magic, and implored the heavens or some preternatural entity to guide them and keep them safe and maybe even to ensure them a bountiful catch.
What this finding suggests is that humans react rationally when confronted with events/phenomena/environment which are for the most part well understood and under their control. On the other hand, humans may have, as part of their repertoire, this nonrational reflexive reaction whenever faced or are about to face something that provokes anxiety or fear. The unknown, the unfamiliar, what is perceived or prejudged to be dangerous--these may elicit nonrational (if not irrational) behavior.
Notwithstanding, nonrational/irrational behavior is still so. There is no reason to believe that preternatural entities and a supernatural dimension exist, or, much less, that these govern and assist us should we implore them to do so. What such behavior may lead to is a mitigation of anxieties or an infusion of hope or courage--as in the case of the Trobrianders. Thus, there are psychological benefits to nonrational belief, benefits which may eventually translate into measurable somatic variables--such as dilation of blood vessels and hence lowering of blood pressure, or a reduction in epinephrine in the blood. Evolution-wise, it may have been to the advantage of our ancestral lineage to possess such inclination to subscribe to nonrational beliefs to reduce the factors that lead to psychosomatic disease and early degeneration of the body. If there is substantive merit in this conjecture then nature would have naturally selected the "strains" of hominids that had a greater longevity from mere palliation of concern/stress as well as the generation of the mettle to "boldly go where no man has gone before," so to speak, simply from subscribing to nonrational beliefs.
Again, that nonrational beliefs may have led or do lead to better physiological conditions and other advantages, does not in any way make the beliefs empirically, factually true. The belief that supplication to the supernatural realm bestows upon us extraordinary protection does not become true simply because it is psychologically comforting to believe in it. Nor can such beliefs be true simply because we "know"--feel in our guts, in our heart or hearts--that it *must* be true. There has to be substantive reasons for a belief to be rational. Mere belief in the belief does not substantiate it. One must look elsewhere to give us reason(s) to hold the belief. And those reasons must be substantive in nature. Else, the belief is predicated on mere faith, not evidence.
Just some thoughts.
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