Not only does the title represent the subject of this post, it's a great disclaimer to get out there right up front. This diary is designed to clarify my views regarding religion since there have been some pretty harsh words slung and some pretty inexcusable assumptions and generalizations made by yes, both sides of this issue. People in general but liberals especially are not a monolithic collective with collective values, beliefs and priorities. We are individuals with interests that overlap in some areas but do not in others but we come together willingly on this wonderful platform that the kos has created for us.
I was originally going to post this several months back but life has intervened. I never forgot the idea of posting it and I believe it's an important topic to cover. If you would like to continue following my thoughts on the matter, please join me below Chester Cheetah's little fart bubble.
I am an atheist. I don't think that's going to come as much of a shock to those who are familiar with my commentary but there it is. "Atheism" is by definition a lack of belief in deities, period. It is not a belief system, let alone a monolithic one, it is not an ideology or a lifestyle or anything that is not contained in "a lack of belief in gods". I don't believe in god(s) in the same way that I don't believe in Treebeard. Both are figures in a book and there is no other evidence on which to base their existence.
That's where faith comes in, which is part of the definition of "religion". Religions must have a component of faith involved, a leap of belief, an assumption not based on observation. If a religion or a specific god's existence was empirically provable, it would stop being religion and start being science. This is just the reality, the setting of the boundaries of this conversation just to be clear on the language. We won't smear or blur definitions, engage in false equivalency or practice pretend debates and I'm not interested in semantic battles in which somebody much more proficient than I inevitably comes along and tells me that I've misused to language. I've expressed myself as well as any other tenth grade drop out could so let's please not go into the high weeds of correct English.
I wasn't always an atheist, I was raised in a pretty strict Roman Catholic home but though I can't remember a time when I didn't see the contradictions in church doctrine, the glaring inconsistencies that everybody else pointedly ignored, I always assumed that there was a god. On the other hand, I was a pretty naive kid and though I'm 54, I'm still shocked when I discover that something my parents had told me long ago was mistaken. Over the years of my church indoctrination, my nagging doubts grew and the inconsistencies started to look more like hypocrisy. How is it possible, I frequently asked myself, that the god that was described in the Bible could so often wantonly, even gleefully, inflict suffering and death? I know all the rhetoric about being punished for sinning and the lord working in mysterious ways and so forth but it became obvious over time that sometimes, most of the time, shit just happens. It isn't an act of god, it's just a chain of events, leading to a conclusion.
After a very intense experience at the age of thirteen, (no it wasn't a near death event or anything like that), I came to the inescapable conclusion that there is no evidence that god exists. I wan't necessarily fully atheist then but it had been made clear to me that there is about as much evidence for the existence of god as there was for the existence of dragons: a lot of anecdotal evidence but precious little else. I reached this epiphany as I said at the age of thirteen and I spent the next two years pissing my parents off to the point that they stopped requiring me to attend Sunday services with them. I thought of myself as very agnostic then; I could accept the possibility of one or more gods but I also accepted that the evidence just isn't there.
Over subsequent years, I went from closer to religion to further away but never fully in the believers' camp again. When I was 33, I had another event occur that had a profound affect on my beliefs. This time it was a near death experience in which I spent several days in a comatose state, during which time my parents were approached about harvesting my organs, (which didn't make any sense, considering I had already signed a donor card). You know what happened to me while I was in a coma with a breathing tube down my neck? Know what I remember from that? Nothing. Absolutely blank. Zero. Zip. Nada. No lights, no voices, no dead relatives on the other side of a river, none of that cliche material that romantic dramas find irresistible. I remember what happened before my "accident" and I remember waking up. In between those points, I might as well have been in mid blink. So lacking a spiritual experience at a time when so many anecdotes describe people having them, I had to put that in the "no evidence for" column too. A few weeks after I woke up, I started describing myself as "atheist" and I have been ever since.
During the period of both my agnosticism and my full blown atheism, I have maintained a hard rule and that is that I don't knock a person's honest faith. Unless and until they use it to exploit, intimidate, despoil or dehumanize, I don't care what somebody believes or doesn't believe. That's way too much pressure to claim to have all the answers. Too many people with any strongly held ideology find it their mission to impress their beliefs upon others. Some overtly and some much more subtly. An overt ideologue will harangue you directly in order to persuade you to their way of seeing things, while an example of a more subtle approach would be projecting their own motives and values onto others, seeing things through rose colored glasses so to speak or stubbornly wearing blinders in order to not upset their point of view. Me? I'm just a middle aged gal who would live and let live if she could do so. Whatever floats your boat but doesn't harm others is both hunky and dory with me. But I do draw the line of having laws based on nothing but a group's interpretation of a specific religion's doctrine. I'm not talking about an obvious crime like murder or theft that are shared values throughout the world but more specifically laws like denying marriage equality, support for which always come down to citing religious points of view in contravention of the document that is supposed to frame our system of government, It always comes down to "god said so" though it's usually at least couched in more flowery language.
I'm not one of those folks who will say that because religion has been used as an excuse to kill in the past, being faithful makes you a de facto supporter of slaughter, though I am one that will emphatically say that yes, religion has been used for that in the past, (not to mention present), but that also doesn't mean that because I'm saying it, I'm judging everybody of faith. I'm thinking that more often than not, the truly vile people throughout history haven't believed the rhetoric they used to whip their followers into such a frenzy as to leave their homes and their lives behind to carry out the will of whatever despot they live under. I'm not a person who regards religious neighbors as somehow mentally deficient or lacking in reasoning skills. I don't assume everybody who believes in god must be a right wing nut job. When I say that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of god, it isn't an insult. I'm not being a smartass or being mean, I'm saying it because there is no empirical evidence for the existence of god. When I say that religion has been used as an excuse for killing for tens of thousands of years, it's because that religion has undeniably been used as an excuse to slaughter people for tens of thousands of years. When I point out that a god isn't required in order to explain our observations, it's because those phenomena don't need a god to be pulling the strings in order to exist. Saying that there is no evidence that the Bible or Qu'ran or Torah or etc., are anything other than works of fiction isn't a slam on your beliefs. It's is a statement of axiomatic, empirical fact.
And when I say that I am atheist, it is because there is no evidence to support the god idea, not because I'm in any way telling other people how to live or what to believe. As I approach my old age, (not for a while yet), I can see why religious faith might be a huge comfort, but there some of you have an advantage over me. Because as much as I can see it's value in the face of my own mortality, I am unable to make that leap. I cannot just decide that something is real because it would make me feel better. While some of you may die peacefully like my mom, convinced you are going to go to a better place, or something, chances are I'm going to face my death in terror of the unknown.
I am not here to slam religion, either generally or specifically. I am not here trying to push my viewpoint on anybody because my lack of belief is not a belief that there is no god, it's a lack of belief in the existence if god because there is no supportive evidence. I know many of the faithful are very sensitive when people dismiss their beliefs. I am not dismissing your beliefs! I am saying that I do not share your beliefs. Period. I am an atheist, not an ideologue. Until there is some evidence, something real to base a belief on, then god is just a dragon. Ironically though, if and when there is such evidence, as I pointed out above, the god stops being a belief and starts being an axiom.
Thank you for allowing me to clarify.