“God.”
When I hear people say this word, I
literally have no idea where they are coming from. No, I don’t feel
like I’ve been forsaken or am somehow “spiritually bankrupt.”
I’m not inexplicably stricken deaf when they utter the sound. I’m
simply flooded with the torrent of meanings that have ever been
associated with the word. My mind flashes to every incoherent story
or scary justification I’ve ever heard. If I’m a person who seeks
even a meager understanding of things, it’s words and concepts like
“god” that lead to nothing.
And that’s why I’m an atheist. I
hesitate to even say atheist because of the weird instance in our
language that allows for a word to exist denoting an absence. I’m
also an asantaist, afairyist, etc. More importantly I think it’s
important to talk about what you are over what you aren’t. Who
cares what you don’t believe in? You’re hardly going to act in
the name of it, justify your actions by it, or ever think a harmful
or helpful thought as a result of it because the “it” in question
isn’t even there.
I shy away from the entitlement people
try to claim from words like “rationalist,” “bright,”
“intellectual,” “humanist,” “free thinker,” “gnostic,”
“agnostic,” etc. These seem to be incomplete and can be used as
something to hide behind when you don’t understand something. Or,
it makes another point of “us vs. them.” It’s as if somehow
they’ve reached the end of their understanding and now this
semi-arbitrary title suits them until they can’t help but think
again.
I’m human. Even if you and I don’t
know every detail of what that entails, you can at least draw a stick
figure. I represent something. I’m made of things. I have
intentions and act upon the world. All of my power or knowledge to do
something comes from simply being human. Everything about the world,
or at least “my world,” is contained in my consciousness at any
given moment I choose to recognize it. At times, it seems like this
concept is harder for people to understand than any abstract notion
of a god.
The simple idea is that there are
rules. It’s a game. If I don’t feed myself and wipe my ass, I’ll
die smelling of shit. If I want to achieve a different end, I’ll
play by the rules. It’s at this point a religious person might say
something like, “I have rules too, and if I don’t follow them, I
won’t get into heaven.” There is a simple, ever so simple, reason
why this isn’t a counterpoint. I didn’t make the rules I have to
follow. You, or someone before you, did. In the realm of pragmatic
objectivity, nothing you think matters. You still get to die if you
don’t eat, you still get to smell if you don’t wipe. Every story
about before our existence and after our death is made up.
But people are so insecure. How could I
live with myself if I thought I was so insignificant? Here’s a
thought. Try it. See how long you really go thinking you’re nothing
but shit and that the people you care about don’t matter. See what
happens when you think you’re actions have no consequences. I’ll
literally put money on that not lasting a day. I don’t feel
comfortable with excuses. You either do something or you don’t, and
while there are a million ways to describe it, few of those ways
actually speak to what happened or didn’t. Distinguishing what
makes stories relevant is of the highest importance to me.
I speak of patterns. When I question
someone’s beliefs, I hear the patterns. In fact, peoples’
response patterns are so prevalent, you will see them throughout
history, in every “rage” thread whining about how illogical
Christians are being, and you can even predict what someone will say
if you know even a modest amount about their background. I think it
is patterns that destroy the world. When we get into habits that
“feel right” or that we’re used to and just carry on until
something bad happens ever wondering why and how it did.
I think belief in god is a bad pattern.
I don’t need, nor want, nor justify
for someone else an external excuse to do something. I cannot deny
what harm comes from disassociating yourself from your
responsibilities or decisions. Do you feel the urge to defend
yourself? From what? Are you special and different? Does your
conception of an Almighty Force trump literally everything that came
before you? I doubt it. You’re not even in the above video :P.
I am humbled by humanity. I get to be
reminded every day how little I understand or know. On the other side
of the coin, the things I’ve worked at, the consequences I enable,
tend to go as expected. I get to slowly shape the world, piece by
piece, into one I find more agreeable. I get to think about death in
a way that makes me appreciate life more than fear what happens when
it’s present. Most importantly, I get to remain internally and
externally consistent. If I woke up tomorrow with just a hate filled
rant about gay people, or thought oil was our ticket to saving the
planet, or volcano ghosts where going to take over Los Angeles,
hopefully, you’d be confused as fuck.
We let kids believe in things that
aren’t there because we empathize. We understand the need for
companionship and how crappy it can be to feel alone. We understand
being afraid of questions and the unknown. My refusal to treat people
like kids puts me in the “most distrusted” group in America? My
insistence on developing a consistent language for our shared human
experience is the worst thing you can conceive a person doing?
Eh, it’s not like you have a choice
or anything so I’ll just keep doing my thing and I guess you’ll
just keep doing yours.
