Spiritual Atheism In my story, the story of how I perceive the outside world, there is no all-encompassing mastermind that fills the universe with its intelligence. I have no internal connection or other personal experience that shows me otherwise. Still, I can imagine a universal God who I can fill with attributes. I can easily create a God story that provides easy answers to difficult questions so that I achieve peace of mind. I can also imagine this could be valuable for others to imagine the same. It is an easy exercise, but it just doesn’t fit for me. I would not be authentic if I claimed a real honest connection to this story. I am completely comfortable believing our universe has not been created by and is not overseen by an invisible super-being or intelligent force. My moral truth is that the God of religious belief is no more than a fictional story. A real universal God makes no sense to me. I believe not only does this God not exist; its existence could not possibly be true. When confronted by some God-believers who ask me the inevitable questions concerning how I explain this or that difficult question about our world and the universe, questions they can’t answer except by invoking the Power of God, my answer is this is the universe we live in and I accept that at the moment there is plenty I don’t understand about it. It is what it is whether I understand it or not. When I do venture my explanation to some questions, leaving God out from my explanation irritates them. Not having answers somehow proves for them their case for the existence of a God. Leaving out God proves to them I am ignorant. They can’t live without answers the way I can nor can they live without their God concept the way I can. It seems to me that their happiness is co-dependent on their faith. Without their faith they would be lost souls. I don’t know if this is true for all God-believers, but I believe this to be true for many. My internal experience is perhaps different from what God-believers experience, or perhaps is the same. I can’t know that for sure; it is just a guess. Neither can believers know that. What I believe I observe is simply that the stories we create consciously or unconsciously to explain our internal experiences are different. This changes nothing about the real universe itself, or says what the real truth is or isn’t. My gut tells me that God-believers are great story tellers, and their gut tells them otherwise. It is a stand-off between stories, no more, no less. I am an atheist and claim to be a spiritual individual who is looking for connection to self, other people, and to the universe. I am a moralist (and I am working on not being a moralizer), who believes that following moral codes, which may or may not coincide with religious codes, create a better, peaceful and more loving world. I believe in self-examination, taking ownership of my emotions, and observing and adjusting my behavior so as to not act out my pain, or blame, shame or guilt others as best as I possibly can in any given moment. I am human and have human failings, but on the whole work hard to improve myself, and my relationships. These are all things some sincere God-believers also practice so I make no claim to be special or superior in any way. I will follow what I follow until a new revelation gives me more insight; then I will adjust myself as best as I’m able. Being an atheist doesn’t hinder me in anyway in being a good person by any reasonable definition. Not believing in God does not deprive me of valuing and admiring the spectacular universe we live in. It does not prevent me from being a loving, caring, thoughtful, and compassionate person. It does not prevent me from being concerned with my spiritual well-being. There is nothing inherently wrong or misguided by being an atheist. This for me is an observable fact not a judgment or a boast. It seems to me that all the various societies, past and present, have never ever existed in a state congruent with our highest ideals regardless of the spiritual belief they follow. Philosophers, religious thinkers, teachers, and writers, all have expressed Utopian visions or a picture of messianic times, which have not yet come to pass. Political systems of different persuasions come and go in attempts to create heaven on earth, control the masses, or create a reality to suit some vision of how society should be. Neither religion alone nor the absence of it has on the whole provided any practical answer to how to create peace on earth. Neither atheism nor theism has solved the problem of human suffering in practical terms. In general we assign too much value on adherence to belief as a solution to what we see as suffering, yet the majority of us keep repeating the same ineffectual behaviors based on belief, expecting belief systems to somehow take hold and work, but always sometime in the future, never now. Being atheistic or religious or a believer in God or a non-believer does not matter; it is how I act out in the world that matters. I believe our external actions should be congruent with our highest ideals. For me, this is the highest expression of the human spirit and the only thing that should define spirituality. External action aligned with our highest ideals is the only thing that counts. Everything else is just a story, a hope, and an excuse to act out bad inappropriate behavior.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 19:28:33 +0000
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