Just Too Dumb to Be an Atheist

There I've said it.   I'm just too damned dumb to accept atheism.   And, the way I see it, so are you even if you won't admit it... yet.  It's the whole faith thing that stops me in my tracks.   What is faith but a willingness to accept as true something that you cannot prove and otherwise wouldn't believe?  It's a suspension of the common sense skepticism that we invoke every day to see us safely through a limitless variety of situations great and small. I know that's a crude definition but it works for my purposes.

To me, atheism is itself a quasi-faith.   The belief that there is no greater moral power than man himself is a bit over-reaching.   It is a conclusion that is founded on man's own intellect which is probably quite feeble and flawed.  It's a conclusion that cannot be reached until we know everything that is inside us and outside us.   Do we have any real idea of what a God would look like, how we can discern the presence or absence of a God?

Just look at how precious little we actually know.   Quantum physics suggests there are no fewer than eleven dimensions.   Mankind's entire experience is based on just four dimensions, one of which we don't even understand.   We have the left/right dimension, the up/down dimension, the forward/backward dimension and we have something that may or may not actually even exist, time.

Time may not exist?  Absolutely.  Years ago I heard this perfectly explained by a senior US Navy officer who commanded the atomic clock at the US Naval Observatory.   Every day he went to work with an awareness that we don't understand time, we can't even prove it exists.

All of our faiths, atheism included, are formed out of this four-dimensional awareness.   Any other  dimension could instantly shatter the wobbly foundations of our strains of faith.   And who is to say that our dimensional realities - four, seven, nine or eleven - would be constant throughout our universe or anything that lies beyond?

It is no wonder we cling to so many "revealed" religions, each founded on one or several supposed human-deity interfaces from the ancient past.   All it takes is for some guy to convince his people that he just had a quiet word with their Maker who told the guy to pass along thus and so.  It either gets traction or it doesn't.   If it gets traction, there you go - scripture.   And then you can hand that down, century by century, unless your religion gets overtaken by another faith or your faithful get trashed by conquerors who set up their Gods instead.   But the longer you keep it going the more certain adherents are to believe it's true.

Revealed religions are, in my opinion, hooey.   That's why there are so many of them each convinced that all others are hooey.  See, no matter what revealed religion you embrace, you already agree with me about each and every other revealed religion.   That speaks volumes.

But this is about atheism which, for many, seems to be the default option when revealed religion is rejected.   Why?   Because you say so.  Really?  Because you with your pointy little head, you who understands so little, you who has never looked high and low or far and wide, you can't see God so he can't exist.   And we're supposed to put aside our skepticism because of that?

So where does that leave me?   I think I'm going to go with Einstein and accept that, somewhere on a scale between possibly and probably, there exists a superior being that we can perceive as Godlike.  I'm going to accept this is evident in the vast mysteriousness of the universe and in human consciousness, compassion and reason.   I guess that is a loose sort of Deism.  Maybe that's just where you wind up when you're too dumb to be an atheist. 

On God and Spirituality

I just finished viewing a panel featuring Hitchens and Dawkins discussing why there is no God and what should be done to spread the word. Very interesting, intensely intellectual discussion.

In case you haven't noticed, their message is spreading. A lot of people are going down the path to hard atheism.

Since you asked, I'll tell you what I think. I don't know, I really don't.

Listening to the views expressed by these leading atheists I was struck by one fatal flaw that has plagued mankind since the beginning of civilization - the firm belief that we're at the centre of everything. It's a powerful urge, given that the religious and the atheists both lapse into it at every turn.

Remember when we had to believe that the planets, including our sun, rotated around the earth? We just had to be the centre of everything. Most of the monotheistic faiths have an idea of their God looking just like - why, me! Oh, c'mon Buddha sure does.

What if we're really way too dumb to get it? We don't expect humans in a vegetative state to be able to intellectualize very much. But what if, in the greater scheme of things, our greatest minds are just a tiny notch above that? What if we're all severely mentally challenged on some galactic scale and are just too damn dumb to know it?

We're still puzzling a lot of things out. Get into quantum physics and the string theory and some of the experts predict there are eleven dimensions, seven more than the mere four that we humans are capable of recognizing. If they're right, you inevitably have to ask what's behind Doors 5 through 11, eh?

We've learned so much over the past century and we're still just scratching the surface of the body of universal knowledge. So, my question is, what's the rush? Do we really have some, make that any legitimate need to resolve this God v. no god question now? Maybe we should just put it all on the back burner for another millennium or so until we get answers to all those questions that we're just now discovering that we didn't even know existed a decade ago and that aren't mentioned anywhere in anyone's holy book.

Now we've used religion as a crutch to try to deal with some of the great, unanswerable questions that have plagued man since he first looked up at the starry night sky. Maybe we were taking unfair advantage of religion, sort of like the dad who says "because" when the kid asks "why." But that would just be another typical human failure, not proof that there is no God.

Religion is curious. Everybody belongs to the right one and all the others are wrong. Look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We all share the same, Old Testament God, we just use different prophets to persecute the innocent. Neat trick, eh?

So I think that, for now, I'm going to remain firmly agnostic. But I'm always willing to change my vote just as soon as you can tell me where it all began, I mean really began, and what's behind those seven doors.

And a very merry Christmas to you all.