BECOMING HUMAN The most dangerous question a theist can ask themselves is, “What if Im wrong?” They think they ask themselves this question by wagering against a false dichotomy, where every other belief is lumped into what amounts to a single opposing viewpoint. As long as you can avoid empathizing with anyone, this works out great. When you make the mistake of putting yourself in the shoes of someone who believes as passionately as you in another religion, perspective erodes the misplaced confidence vested in a claim that is intellectually equal, when viewed objectively. From my own experience, and from that of others who have come out of religious faith, I have found this process of thought leads to abstractions that vary in form from experimenting with other religions to a more pantheistic or agnostic view of the divine. Eventually, for some of us, the end result of comparing alternative forms of belief leads us to the realization that its probably all just ways in which many of us try to cope with the things we cannot understand about the world around us. As my cognitive dissonance faded, it was like seeing the walls of a mental prison that I could have just walked out of any time. What changes isnt just what you believe, but how you think. Realizing the commonality of all assertions made in the absence of valid or reasonable evidence pushes you toward a more scientific way of looking at the world for meaning and purpose. Once you arrive there, and begin to truly understand science and what it can teach us, it becomes frustrating to see those who use the blank spaces in our knowledge to hold onto the dissonance of religious belief. Even more perplexing and annoying, is the fact that some religious apologists use the falsifiability of ideas as a way to discredit valid theories against the unjustified claims of faith propped up by centuries of ignorance and violence by which these beliefs spread and maintained their dominance. They forget that whatever they are now, their ancestors were converted from something else by means which didnt involve a polite debate, to say the least. The truth so many of us seem afraid to face is that we are alone on this planet, but only from the standpoint of a preconceived notion of the supernaturally divine. No one is out there watching over us, and the belief that there is can only be held by accepting a demeanor of indifference to the suffering of others around us. We made it up. We were afraid. Its OK to realize this, because the only Hell that can harm you is the one we make right here for each other by failing to comprehend there is no one watching over us other than your fellow human beings. When you get to this point of your journey of thought, its here that you finally comprehend the true harm of religious faith in this world. Even as much as religions claim to do good through the actions of human beings trying to help one another, spiritual faith creates, by its very nature, the framework for the evil it claims to oppose by rationalizing the harm we cause, and projecting arbitrary providence onto an abstraction of human ignorance, rather than onto our own actions as individuals through the impressions of our respective cultures and societies, This is why I am not really an atheist at heart. We use that word because so many still believe, and we become defined by our denial of their unjustified claims rather than what we truly are: humanists.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:25:10 +0000
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