In Need of a New (g)od

"There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."---Shaw

We contemplate our day to day existence, just like you. We live in coffee houses, reading the newspapers and talking about the future. We are the profane and vulgar and most devout people will not have us. The sad thing is, most atheists won't have us either. We are agnostics and we have no mode of actual belief rather than doubt and questions. Because that's what knowledge is, a series of doubts and questions.

I grew out of my atheist years when I graduated high school. The truth is, I've never been so sure if there was a God or not. Most of my friends, I hung out with atheists, satanists, Wiccans and the like, had their heads on straight, or as straight as they could get them at such a young age. Me, however, I was a different story. At night, I'd stare up at the ceiling and talk, hoping to get some reassurance that someone up there was listening to me and would answer. Nothing ever came. No signs. No thoughts. No nothing. Not even that deep seeded feeling that God was present.

I was at that mechanical age. I pondered thoughts. I read a lot. I did what any high school reject would do and tested the limits of my social status. But now, out of high school, I began to wonder what the hell this life was for. If I'm not an atheist and I'm not a believer, then what the devil am I?

Like a shooting start flashing across the sky, I got my answer when I heard the word agnostic. Now free from having to label myself of a believer or a nonbeliever, I could call myself a doubter, and doubting is what I did.

However, with a title comes responsibility. Like any title, or label, thrown at you, you have to be able to live up to it. If you're an editor, you're expected to edit work. If you're a Catholic, you're expected to follow certain rules, however, most of you don't. And so on. What was my responsibility? To keep in check those who believe and those who didn't.

I read the books on both sides of the playing field. And because now I had no religious affiliations, I could freely read books on all sorts of religious practices and holy texts. However, I do live in a Judeo-Christian nation, so much of the texts related to that mindset. I also read a lot of atheist texts. This allowed me enough information on why religion is so important, yet so burdening upon a society.

In his 2003 book, Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, A.C. Grayling starts off his essay on religion by writing:

"Four kinds of answer are standardly given to the question why religion exists. One is that it provides explanations - of the origin of the universe, of the way it works, of the apparently inexplicable things that happen in it, and of why it includes evil and suffering. Another is that religion provides comfort, giving hope of life after death, providing reassurance in a hostile world, and a means (by supplication, propitiation, and the practice of one or another form of prescribed behavior) to get a better deal in it. A third is that it makes for social order, in promoting morality and social cohesion. And a fourth is that it rests on the natural ignorance, stupidity, superstitiousness and gullibility of mankind." (20)

I agree with Grayling. Religion only serves one purpose and that is to sedate the minds of the those who follow like sheep. Without them, then religion is lost. However, in the more friendly approach of it, if a person has a strong faith in something, then he or she should be allowed to practice it to the fullest extent as long as it doesn't not bring harm upon others.

This has, however, become the issue with God based religions, including Christianity. For media purposes, the only religion must used is Islam, because we're at war with them and we don't want to sound like the bad guys. Catholics get a bad wrap because one or two priests (I'm grossly understating here) touched a boy. However there have been just as many cases of Lutherans, Protestants, Baptists, Methodists, Jewish, etc. who have touched and molested children for years. The only one who gets the bad rap is the one who would most likely vote Democrat even though they are a prolife people.

Mainstream violence is derived from the very essence that complains. When an abortion clinic is bombed, are we to blame televisions and movies for the idea?
Or shall we turn to something that is more reasonable, like the fundamental religious megalomaniac hellbent on bringing the end of days upon us.

Religious guru Pat Robertson has indicated many times on his show that certain leaders of certain countries should be killed. He has also prayed for the death of Supreme Court judges. He praised hurricane Katrina for wiping the sin away from the world when it hit New Orleans.

His former partner in crime, Jerry Falwell, once professed:

"I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters -- the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats -- what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact -- if, in fact -- God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.....And I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say: you helped this happen." (Falwell Quotes)

In "Religion Kills," Chapter Two of his book God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens wrote this about the two "reverends":

"The disappointment was, and to me remains, acute. Within hours the "reverends" Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had announced that the immolation of their fellow creatures was a divine judgment on a secular society that tolerated homosexuality and abortion. At the solemn memorial service for the victims, held int he beautiful National Cathedral in Washington, an address was permitted from Billy Graham, a man whose record of opportunism and anti-Semitism is in itself a minor national disgrace. His absurd sermon made the claim that all the dead were now in paradise and would not return to us even if they could. I say absurd because it is impossible even in the most lenient terms to believe that a good number of sinful citizens had not been murdered by Al-Qaeda that day. And there is no reason to believe that Billy Graham knew the current whereabouts of their souls, let alone their posthumous desires. But there was alos something sinister in hearing detailed claims to knowledge of paradise, of the sort that bin Laden himself was making on behalf of the assassins." (32)

Hitchens later goes on to add:

"You can nominate your own favorite sin here, as did the "reverends" Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell after the immolation of the World Trade Center. In that instance, the proximate cause was to be sought and found in America's surrender to homosexuality and abortion. (Some ancient Egyptians believed that sodomy was the cause of earthquakes: I expect this interpretation to revive with especial force when the San Andreas Fault next gives a shudder under Gommorrah of San Francisco.)" (149)

The fight between the devout and the atheists has become the center point of people like me. When an atheist makes an argument against a religious man, I must step in and support the argument on the other's behalf. The same goes for those who make hasty comments against atheists.

I had this girl in my Intro to Philosophy class just last year, Fall Semester. I wasn't an open agnostic because I like to pick my battles. But when she said the following sentence against atheists, I felt that I must correct her before she lives her whole life in naïveté. She said, "It doesn't matter what they think now. When they're confronted by death, their first thought will be God."

I reviewed my life in a millisecond and spoke up, "How do you know?" This got the class's attention. Every head turn to her, waiting for a response.

I had the unfair advantage of taking other courses in Philosophy before slacking off my senior year and took an easy class for an essay A to finish up my minor. Most of the students in that class were freshman and blind-faith followers. They had never once thought any different thoughts than God.

Her response was, "I've known people."

"You've known people who didn't believe in God, died, and told you they turned to God?" The argument made sense. She shook her head. "I just know," was her reply.

It's unfair for me to say that she has is the only one who has ever said something that stupid before in my life. There have been a plethora of nameless faces who have made the similar judgments. Two actually come to mind:

• In high school, I knew a gay atheist, someone I had a sort of boyhood crush on, who was talking to another friend. During one discussion, a pregnant, out-of-wedlock girl turned around, disgusted by his "choice" in life and said, "You'll go to hell for that." It was like the pot calling the kettle black.
• The other, and more relevant to my topic, is two girls, possibly college freshman, or stupid college students, were in the philosophy section at a local Barnes and Noble. They were pursuing through the books, looking for one in particular, Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not An Christian. After a half-hearted discussion, one of the girls dimwittedly said, "I don't understand how you can't beleive. I mean, how else were you created."

However, the girl back in the philosophy course didn't make an argument against me, or made one for me. She simply went on to say that she has heard stories, not first hand, but through the grapevine. I remarked, "That's hearsay, and you can't believe hearsay."

Her response? "That's your reality." as if there are different realities and each of us make up our own.

Because the arguments have escalated over time, I fear it will only be a matter of years before something else happens that'll throw us into an even larger tsunami of theism. But there is a solution to the problem.

Both Theists and Atheists are wrong, period. There is no such thing as pure knowledge in the physical world, just a series of questions and doubts. All that cannot be solved through science and mathematics without being debunked years later through the same process are an exception, if there exists such a thing.

We cannot know for sure if there is a god because when we meet him/her, we'll be dead with no way of communicating with the living. And we will never know if there isn't a god because we'll be dead and that's it, all cognitive knowledge in us is erased.

What we do know, however, is the universal rights every human has. We have a right to live. We have a right to do whatever it is that makes us happy, save causing harm to others.

I call upon Americans, Europeans, the world, to sit down, as you individual selves and come up with something that makes sense to you. I'm not asking you to create new gods to worship, but to come up with a way of life that makes you happy and makes those around you feel the same. If you are able to do that and live a good life, with good health, a clean conscience, and so on, then you are doing more than any Christian, any Buddhist, any Hindu, any Islamic, any atheist in this world. Let down the shackles and seek the truth on your own. Until then, I'll see you in the front lines of this never ending war.