Dear fellow Kossacks:
Not wanting to push any newsworthy diaries down the list during the day, I'm posting this late tonight in hopes that a few curious night owls will assist me in reviewing the following short speech I am scheduled to soon deliver to a college audience of comparative religion majors.
Any advice that might serve to enhance the speech or clarify my thinking will be greatly appreciated. If you simply read, tip (or not), and move on, then I thank you for stopping by.
-StrangeAnimals
Let me begin by telling you that it has been, and always will be for me far simpler to send my words down the entire length of my arms and out my fingers than to travel them the far shorter but more torturous route from my brain to my mouth.
Therefore my prepared notes, from which I will be reading, for which I hope you'll forgive my not so occasional downward glances. Woe the day and audience that ever must hear me speak extemporaneously!
First, let me speak of heaven. Does heaven exist? I believe not. I believe this globe to be the only heaven we have. For me, life on earth is of exclusive importance, and quite sufficient.
In the words of Richard Jeffries: "Eternity is here and now. I am within it, much like the butterfly on the light-permeated air. Nothing is still to come. Everything is already here. Eternity now. Immortal life now. I am experiencing it here, at this very instant." Amen.
This earth, this universe, they awe and inspire me far more for their existence in spite of some higher being than as a result of one. The vastness terrestrial to celestial reassures me. It puts my anxieties in perspective. When I contemplate the immensity of all that is, my ego seems laughable by comparison.
And while I will never with my own eyes see the expanding universe beyond our thin and fragile atmospheric armor, every day I see – and long to see more of – what lies beneath, the beauty that is on this planet everywhere present.
Steadfastly clandestine spirits quickly bore me; reality is so much more interesting, so much vaster and variegated. Why chase the invisible and unknowable when there is this entire amazing world here for us to see, know, and love?
What then of an afterlife? I do not believe there to be reached such a place or plane, higher or otherwise. I believe that neither you nor I, nor any part of "I" or "you", shall survive our deaths. My unbelief in some great beyond thus each moment kindles within me concern and care more for my life before death than life after.
And now let me speak of God. In my best rational judgment there is no credible evidence that an entity possessing the properties that most believers attribute to "God" actually exists. While there might be some sort of organizing principle out there, I do not believe in a creating God, an intervening God, a judging God.
Or, as Einstein once professed, "I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings".
I do believe that many – most, in fact – people need God. God, and therefore religion, exists to reassure man, to pacify him in the face of death, of total nothingness thereafter. I believe God to have been invented by men so as not to confront the reality of their final condition. The power of religion is neither more nor less than our own powerlessness in the face of the void. This is what makes it so essential to so many people.
God is also the absolute dream, the dream of the absolute – an infinity of love, justice, and truth. I am all for it, just as most people are, by which I mean that I would definitely prefer for such a thing to exist, but this is no reason to believe that it does. Indeed, given the perpetual condition of humanity, it is a strong reason not to.
Leaving aside our base or vulgar desires, which have no need of God to be fulfilled, what we wish for most is, firstly, not to die, at least not completely, not irreversibly; secondly, to be reunited with the loved ones we have lost; thirdly, for justice and peace to triumph; and, finally and perhaps most importantly, to be loved.
Now what does religion tell us – and the Christian religion in particular? That we shall not die, or not really; that we shall rise from the dead and thus be reunited with the loved ones who have preceded us into the afterlife; that justice and peace will prevail in the end; and, finally, that we are already the object of an infinite love. Who could ask for more? This is what for me makes religion so very suspicious: As the saying goes, it is too good to be true!
Though said to be ubiquitous, God is invisible. Since he is reputed to be all-powerful, this means that he refuses to show himself. Why? What would you think of a father who hid from his children? The idea of a God who prefers to hide himself is incompatible to me with the idea of God as Father, of God as all-loving.
Furthermore, such an idea of God makes horror inexplicable. What sort of father would let hundreds of thousands of his children die in tsunamis, in earthquakes? What sort of father would go on hiding as millions of his children suffered through Hitler’s Final Solution – to say nothing of Stalin’s Gulag, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, and Rwanda and Congo – as they were deported, humiliated, starved, tortured, and murdered?
The Holocaust alone would make the very notion of an all-powerful God for me intolerable. Even today, there remains in the world too much injustice, too much suffering, and too many who die in agony and terror for the concept of its creation by an almighty, infinitely kind and knowing and loving God to be tenable in my eyes.
Though I renounce religion for myself, I find no compelling reason to take faith away from those who need it – or even those who simply live better because they have it. Their faith in no way offends me – why should I combat it? Humanity is far too fragile and life far too difficult for people to go around spitting on each other’s faiths.
I loathe fanaticism of all kinds, including atheistic fanaticism. More power to those whom religion helps them live!
Renouncing religion by no means implies renouncing spiritual life. People can do without religion, but they cannot do without communion, fidelity, and love. Nor can they do without spirituality.
What is the spirit? To me, it is the power to think, insofar as it gives us access to truth, universality, or laughter. The spirit is not a substance, not some "soul" that withdraws from our flesh and bones upon their extinction. Rather, it is a function, a capacity to think, will, imagine, create, laugh, enjoy, anger, envy, and mourn. It is our essence, but it is not an essence.
And, finally, what of Jesus? I believe that Jesus was a real, genuine person, a historical figure, a great man, the details of whose life and mission has been distorted by subsequent advocates and enemies both.
I count Jesus among my greatest of heroes, of role models. Jesus is much more than a fakir or a magician. What matters in Jesus’ message is love, not miracles. Why should my atheism prevent me from seeing the greatness of this message?
I admire Jesus’ acceptance or anticipation of the separation of church and state ("Render unto Caeser the things which are Caeser’s), his sense of universal humanity ("insomuch as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it unto me"), his valuing of the present moment ("take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself"), and his freedom of the spirit ("the truth shall make you free").
I admire his parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, his Sermon on the Mount ("Blessed are the meek; ...those which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; ...the peacemakers"), his solitude, his courage, his humiliation, his crucifixion.
And I lament that so many Christians know so little of their Christ.
As I see it, our primary duty, the one from which all others follow, is that of living and behaving humanely. Religion can neither guarantee that we do so, nor exempt us from needing to do so. Do people really need to believe in God to be convinced that sincerity is preferable to dishonesty, courage to cowardice, generosity to egoism, gentleness and compassion to violence and cruelty, justice to injustice, love to hate?
To not believe in God is a powerful reason to go on paying the utmost attention to life, peace, and justice. And our children. Life is all the more precious for being rare, fragile, and fleeting. Justice and peace are all the more necessary, all the more urgent, because nothing can guarantee their ultimate victory. Humanity is all the more moving for being alone, courageous, and loving.
All this I believe, more and more with every passing day. There’s nothing else. No God. No Devil. Nothing. No damnation. No redemption. There’s just us, and what we do. The things we achieve, the messes we make.
Whether we have religion or not, nothing can exempt us from having to respect the lives, freedom, and dignity of other people. It is not religion that makes love superior to hatred, generosity to egotism, and justice to injustice. Atheists are as liable to be virtuous as believers are liable not to be.
If about all this I’m wrong, I’ll not know until I die. If I’m right, I’ll not know when I die. Either way, until my days are done my life is lived the same.